Surveillance Zone Domain

Overview#

A university campus has very different surveillance requirements across its zones. The main entrance needs face detection and licence plate recognition. The chemistry building requires fire and smoke detection with a short data retention window for privacy compliance. The car parks need vehicle detection but not face analysis. The Surveillance Zone domain manages these per-zone configurations: geographic boundaries with polygon definitions, default AI detection profiles, data retention periods, and hierarchical structure so that the campus can be broken into buildings and sub-areas while still being managed as a unified deployment.

Key Features#

• Zone Definition: Create surveillance zones with names, descriptions, geographic centre points, and optional boundary polygons to define precise monitoring areas.

• Geographic Boundaries: Define zone boundaries using geographic polygons that enable spatial queries to determine which zone covers a given location and ensure comprehensive coverage.

• Hierarchical Structure: Organise zones in parent-child hierarchies, enabling districts to contain sub-zones and supporting multi-level geographic management of surveillance areas.

• Default AI Profiles: Configure default AI analysis profiles per zone (such as crime, medical, fire, and traffic detection) to automatically apply appropriate detection models to cameras within each zone.

• Data Retention Policies: Set configurable retention periods per zone to manage how long surveillance data is stored, supporting compliance with organisational and regulatory data retention requirements.

• Zone Classification: Categorise zones by type (such as district, campus, corridor, or facility) for organised management of diverse surveillance coverage areas.

Use Cases#

Zone-based surveillance configuration is essential wherever different areas within a deployment have distinct security, privacy, or detection requirements. Key industries include public safety and law enforcement, transport and infrastructure, and corporate and campus security.

• Campus Security: Define zones around buildings, parking areas, and perimeters with tailored detection profiles for each area's unique security requirements.

• District-Level Management: Organise large coverage areas into hierarchical zones that mirror organisational boundaries for streamlined management and reporting.

• Compliance Management: Configure zone-specific data retention periods to meet different regulatory requirements across jurisdictions or facility types.

• Detection Optimisation: Assign appropriate AI detection profiles to each zone based on the types of threats and activities most relevant to that area.

Integration#

The Surveillance Zone domain supports geographic organisation across the surveillance platform:

• Camera Management: Cameras are associated with surveillance zones
• Surveillance AI: Zone detection profiles drive AI model configuration
• Surveillance Platform: Zones organise the overall surveillance deployment
• Alert System: Alert rules can be scoped to specific zones

Open Standards#

• GeoJSON (RFC 7946): Zone boundary polygons are defined and exchanged as GeoJSON objects; the platform stores them via PostGIS ST_GeomFromGeoJSON and serialises them back with ST_AsGeoJSON for all spatial queries and zone coverage checks.
• OGC Simple Features / WGS 84 (EPSG:4326): All zone geometries are stored in the WGS 84 geographic coordinate reference system (SRID 4326) using PostGIS, enabling standards-compliant spatial containment and proximity queries across zone hierarchies.
• GraphQL (June 2018 Specification): Zone configuration, creation, and retrieval are fully exposed through a typed GraphQL API (queries and mutations), allowing clients to request only the zone fields they require.
• JSON Web Token (RFC 7519) with RS256: Every GraphQL operation on surveillance zones is authenticated by verifying a JWT signed with RS256, with public keys fetched from a JWKS endpoint, ensuring only authorised users can read or modify zone configurations.
• ISO 8601: All zone record timestamps (created_at, updated_at) are stored and returned in UTC, conforming to ISO 8601 datetime representation for consistent cross-system interoperability.
• ONVIF (Open Network Video Interface Forum): Cameras assigned to surveillance zones are onboarded and managed via ONVIF, the open IP camera interface standard, so that zone-level AI detection profiles and retention policies apply uniformly across interoperable camera hardware.

Last Reviewed: 2026-02-24 Last Updated: 2026-04-14