Port-Adjacent Distribution Centre: LPR, Thermal Cameras & 30-Day Retention for Cargo Security

The company's annual stock reconciliation for 2024 documented cargo theft losses of BDT 2 crore — approximately USD 165,000 — comprising missing cargo from sealed containers (discovered during devanning), missing goods from the warehouse's open storage area, and unaccounted shortfalls in outbound delivery quantities. The losses were distributed across multiple clients and cargo types, but were concentrated in high-value, easily resaleable goods: consumer electronics, branded cosmetics, and pharmaceutical products.

Cargo theft in Chittagong's port zone is a recognized endemic problem. The concentration of high-value goods, the transient nature of the labor force (many temporary and casual workers), and the complexity of container movements that involve multiple handoffs between shipping lines, customs brokers, freight forwarders, and warehouse operators creates numerous points where items can be removed without immediate detection. The company's security team had limited tools for investigation: their existing 60-camera DVR system — installed in 2019 — provided only 7-day footage retention, and the DVR system had recurring hard drive failures that reduced effective coverage to approximately 30 of the 60 cameras at any given time.

Vehicle entry and exit control was functionally absent. While there was a manned gate, the gate log was a paper record of truck registration numbers manually written by the gate guard — a record that was neither complete (guards occasionally missed entries during busy periods) nor searchable (finding a specific vehicle required reading through the paper log page by page). Container trucks routinely entered without complete documentation being checked against the gate log; some drivers had exploited the manual system to exit with cargo loaded under undeclared manifests.

The warehouse perimeter — a 340-metre perimeter fence line — was monitored only by security guard patrols, which the company's security manager acknowledged covered each perimeter point on average once every 40 minutes at night. A section of perimeter fence on the western side of the facility (backing onto an access road used by informal traders) had been cut twice in the preceding 18 months — the cuts discovered during morning guard checks rather than in real time. Both fence cuts created a window during which persons could have entered the compound; whether goods were removed during those windows could not be determined given the 7-day DVR retention and the specific timing of discovery.

The company's largest client — an FMCG multinational that accounted for approximately 30% of the facility's revenue — had issued a formal vendor performance notice citing cargo shortage rates at the Chittagong facility as exceeding their acceptable threshold. The notice indicated that unless demonstrable security improvement was achieved within six months, they would transfer their Chittagong import handling to an alternative logistics provider.

SSAL designed and installed a three-layer security system: perimeter thermal detection, vehicle gate ANPR, and internal IP surveillance — all managed under the Genetec Security Center VMS.

Axis Thermal Perimeter Detection — 8 Units: Eight Axis Q1961-TE thermal network cameras were installed on the 340-metre perimeter fence line at 45-metre intervals, providing continuous fence-line coverage. Axis thermal cameras detect human body heat against background temperature, providing reliable perimeter intrusion detection in darkness, rain, and the frequent atmospheric haze of the Chittagong coastal environment — conditions where visible-light cameras provide poor detection performance. The thermal cameras are integrated with Axis' ACAP (Axis Camera Application Platform) to run onboard fence-line intrusion analytics: any human-sized thermal signature crossing or approaching within 3 metres of the fence triggers an immediate alert to the Genetec Security Center, displaying the camera feed and alarm notification on the security operations workstation.

The thermal camera installation eliminated the 40-minute perimeter gap. Detection is continuous and real-time — a perimeter intrusion is detected within seconds of the fence line being crossed, regardless of time of day or weather conditions.

Genetec AutoVu ANPR — Vehicle Gates: Genetec AutoVu ANPR cameras were installed at all vehicle access lanes: 4 lanes at the main gate (2 entry, 2 exit) and 2 lanes at the secondary gate (1 entry, 1 exit). AutoVu captures every entering and exiting vehicle's license plate, timestamp, and vehicle image. The AutoVu Genetec database includes a pre-registered vehicle list: all contracted container trucks and delivery vehicles with known plate numbers are registered with client name and cargo authorization. Unregistered vehicles trigger a flagged alert — the security supervisor at the gate control room sees an "UNKNOWN VEHICLE" alert rather than the green "AUTHORIZED" confirmation that registered vehicles generate.

The paper gate log is entirely replaced by the AutoVu digital record, which is searchable by plate number, date/time range, and client in under 5 seconds. The logistics company now has a complete, accurate, and tamper-evident record of every vehicle movement through every gate.

Hikvision Internal Cameras — 120 Units: 120 Hikvision IP cameras were installed inside the 200,000 sqft warehouse: 4MP dome cameras (DS-2CD2143G2-I) in the storage aisles, 4MP colorVu cameras (DS-2CD2347G2-LU) in the devanning and repacking area (where lighting conditions are variable), and 8MP cameras (DS-2CD2083G2-I) at the loading bays where cargo is loaded onto outbound trucks. Camera placement was designed to ensure full coverage of all cargo handling areas — every storage aisle, every devanning bay, every loading dock — without blind spots.

Genetec Security Center VMS — Unified Platform: All cameras — Axis thermal, Genetec AutoVu, and Hikvision internal — are managed under the Genetec Security Center VMS platform. Genetec's correlation capability links AutoVu vehicle entries to internal camera events: when a specific truck enters via an AutoVu gate, the VMS creates a linked event record that a security investigator can query — "show me all internal camera footage from the period Vehicle X was on premises." This correlation was the specific investigative capability SSAL proposed and that the security manager had identified as critical.

96TB NVR Storage — 30-Day Retention: Six Hikvision DS-9664NI-I16 NVRs (each with 16TB usable RAID storage) were installed in the facility's IT room, providing 96TB total storage capacity — sufficient for 30-day continuous recording at full resolution across all 120 internal cameras. The 30-day retention policy is enforced by the Genetec VMS, which automatically archives footage segments beyond 30 days to a secondary NAS (Network Attached Storage) with 60TB capacity — providing a 90-day accessible archive for high-priority investigation hold events.