Transportation Management Centers: Streaming Video Sharing and Distribution - Final Report

Chapter 11. Use Cases

Below are several State department of transportation (DOT) use-cases outlining different approaches to closed-circuit television (CCTV) video stream sharing from Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia. Key differentiators between each user-case include:

Maryland Department of Transportation

The Maryland DOT's transportation management center (TMC) has been providing video feeds from its traffic cameras to multiple departments, agencies, key decision makers, and the public since the late 1980s. They have always architected their streaming solutions throughout the years in a way that allows them to restrict access to those feeds "on the fly" to protect sensitive footage during critical events. However, in the late 2000's, the agency was given a mandate to further increase the ability to share live video with more public safety agencies, other States, the public, and the media while also being able to ingest additional video feeds from these partners. With this new mandate, the Maryland DOT faced three main obstacles:

1. The variety of the native video formats made interoperability difficult;
2. The high bandwidth of the native video feeds restricted scalable distribution across networks; and
3. The inability to share video in a common format across network, to large distributed user groups, as well as mobile responders.

To reach the highest number of non-DOT "public" first responders in Maryland, the Coordinated Highway Action Response Team (CHART) immediately involved the Maryland Department of Information Technology to ensure that the State's intranet (networkMaryland) would be able to serve as an additional conduit of the Maryland DOT emergency data and video system.

The work itself consisted of two primary tasks. If data and video was to be shared, the first task was to establish a secure video and data distribution architecture. The second task was to establish a scalable solution for transcoding the source video formats into a common format to enable multiple centers to view video and data from multiple agencies.

The problem: As shown on the top half of figure 9, in the past, data interoperability was met by placing "dedicated workstations" in each other's facilities and video interoperability by encoding/decoding/re-encoding/re-decoding video.

The Solution:

• Video shared with partners through security approved, thoroughly tested Commercial Off the firewalls.
• Video translated between IP-based formats instead of re-encoding/re-decoding between NTSC.
• Multiple Security zones to enable sharing (and non-sharing when necessary) by class of video user.

MDOT's technical solution was ultimately implemented by Skyline Technology Solutions which also implements enterprise-level video sharing solutions to other States. MDOT is successfully sharing thousands of video feeds from multiple agencies utilizing various source video formats by transcoding the video in real time, reducing the bandwidth of the video, eliminating unnecessary equipment, and presenting it in a common format that is network, security and distribution friendly. As a result, CHART has been able to increase the number of cameras available to the public as well as provide increased situational awareness to decision makers across the State.

Maryland has worked to replace aging cameras with newer IP cameras that can stream to multiple, simultaneous profiles. Maryland has also invested heavily in mobile CCTV cameras. These cameras can be mounted inside the vehicle dash or mounted to the top of the patrol vehicle with an integrated PTZ feature that can be controlled remotely at the operations center. Each patrol mounted camera costs approximately $15k to install and can be controlled by the State's transportation operation center/transportation management center (TOC/TMC) software. Video is transmitted via the State's secure Access Point Name (APN) across an AT&T network. These cameras provides agencies with mobile, remote live streaming video, providing realtime views of incidents and events where there are no fixed mounted cameras or infrastructure to provide surveillance. Now, operators and managers in the operations center have more information available to respond and manage planned and unplanned events. The State freely streams their mobile CCTV cameras to other agencies and partners.

North Carolina Department of Transportation

North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) does not currently have the technical capability to stream their 900 CCTV cameras to the public or web at this time. They only publish shapshots to their traveler information website; however, they do allow the media to install servers in their TMCs to get access to live video streams.

NCDOT has created a unique method of funding their media-sharing. First, they make the media pay for and install their own equipment at the NCDOT. This arrangement is non-exclusive in that the NCDOT retains the right to enter into multiple agreements with other media entities—also requiring that those additional parties bear the cost of providing their own equipment. Alternatively, the media outlets can join forces and equally share the cost of providing images and equipment through additional agreements (see figure 13).

Additionally, the media are required to provide NCDOT with "15 thirty (30) second Public Service Announcement spots each year" that will run between the hours of 6AM and 7PM as shown in their Media Agreement in figure 14.

NCDOT is also in the middle of a massive infrastructure upgrade to all digital video and a transition to a new network. After the completion of this upgrade, NCDOT plans to re-evaluate, and eventually deploy streaming video. The North Carolina legislature is even considering recording their live traffic feeds for safety and security reasons.⁵ A $1.5M bill⁶ has been put forward to their general assembly.

Virginia Department of Transportation

In 2011, VDOT decided to outsource the serving of their video (and other data) assets through what they called their Traffic Video and Detection (TV&D) project. A core component of this program was to manage access to VDOT's live video streams through a web portal found at: https://www.vdotdatasharing.org/TVDDocs/Terms_of_Use.html.

As part of this program, VDOT offers 15 frame per second video at 320 x 240 resolution at no cost to qualified users. However, the agency also offers 30 frame per second video at significantly higher resolution for media and other partners requiring this higher quality video. VDOT states that "All fees associated with the provision of high quality video are for cost recovery and will not contribute to revenue generation."

Users interested in gaining access to the video feeds must first sign one of three different license agreements that are based on the expected use.

• Public entity for non-commercial use
• Private entity for non-commercial use
• Private entity for commercial use

One key stipulation of the video sharing agreement is that the VDOT logo must be displayed at all times over the video feeds—thus providing branding and attribution to VDOT. In principle, this makes sense—especially for broadcasters, as it provides marketing of VDOT services and traveler information to the broader public. In practice, however, the large branding banner and smaller logo can obscure critical information--especially when zoomed in to an incident scene.

Licensing Issues

Proponents of VDOT's TV&D licensing agreement report that it helps VDOT maintain stricter control over agency data assets, receive due credit for VDOTs information, and recoup the costs of the data feeds. Opponents of the agreement claim that they are overly restrictive, cause financial hardship to the public (but particularly the private) sector, and cannot be signed by some governmental agencies as a result of liability, indemnification, and other State-based laws. Certain clauses are deemed too risky or contrary to local laws to allow an agency to be able to sign the agreement and acquire access. Of the most concern is the clause that States begin "This Agreement and all amendments thereto shall be governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia…" Northern Virginia is part of the National Capital Region and borders Washington D.C. and the State of Maryland. For regional operations and coordination, it is imperative that State government agencies operating in these neighboring States be granted access to CCTV covering roads near borders. However, no State government will agree to abide by the laws of another State. This single clause has remained a frustrating barrier to CCTV sharing between government agencies.