"The Eyes of Texas"

Folks from Texas are familiar with the "The Eyes of Texas", the alma mater of the University of Texas at Austin.  For those who may not be familiar with this song, the lyrics are as follows:

The eyes of Texas are upon you,
All the live long day.
The eyes of Texas are upon you,
You cannot get away.
Do not think you can escape them,
At night, or early in the morn'. 
The eyes of Texas are upon you, 
Till Gabriel blows his horn!

The lyrics carry considerable more validity today as surveillance cameras are multiplying at an astronomical rate.  Chances are that you are within the coverage of a surveillance camera more than 50% of the time that you walk through your community.  Ownership of these devices is split between public and private entities.  To date, most of these cameras are not interconnected in any way and are certainly not available to First Responders.  Most of these cameras are placed with a single purpose in mind and are seldom monitored by anyone unless a problem arises that makes their recorded information important and then considerable time is necessary before the video can be recovered and made available to those who need it.

Everyone knows that video is a bandwidth hog...or is it?  Many improvements have been made in recent time to reduce the bandwidth of video signals...and video does well over the Internet.  Suppose for a moment we were to install a high capacity Digital Video Recorder in your community and through a series of "Interlocal Agreements" with institutions in the area we were to tap the video from all of the surveillance cameras and store it in this DVR for 24 hours. 

This system could then provide us with two major tools.  First is a limited record of what each of these cameras saw during a 24 hour period and second, possibly the most important, First Responders could have this video available to them when they respond to a call for service...providing of course there is a high speed wireless system available to them.  The IP link to the video would show up with the Computer Aided Dispatching system's call for service.

Imagine, police responding to a bank robbery in progress with video available from the bank.  We really needed such a system at Columbine and Virginia Tech.  How important would these signals be to a group responding to a terrorist act in progress, or a natural disaster?  Why haven't we done this already?  Probably because in most communities we don't have broadband wireless systems in place to complete the loop from the cameras to the DVR and from the DVR to the First Responder...the same system that can meet the needs of most other government operations in the area.

This would be a major undertaking in any community.  However, the results would save lives, reduce crime and improve economic development. 

Just some thoughts for you...

Leonard Scott