Case Study: Louisiana State University achieves scalable, campus-wide surveillance and improved situational awareness with Milestone Systems

Louisiana State University (LSU) keeps watchful eye on flagship campus

Louisiana State University (LSU) needed a campus‑wide surveillance strategy to improve safety across its 2,000‑acre flagship campus after several high‑profile incidents. The challenge was to unify about 40 disparate, sometimes proprietary cameras and scale to roughly 250 cameras covering varied facilities and stakeholders—residence halls, stadiums, labs, parking and public spaces—while accommodating different user needs and compliance requirements.

In mid‑2009 LSU deployed Milestone XProtect Corporate, created purchasing standards, and began transitioning to IP cameras (using encoders where appropriate), leveraging campus Cisco/Alvarion wireless and integrator MMR. Centralized monitoring at police dispatch, tailored user policies, motion analytics and a 7TB SAN for storage improved incident response and operations—helping identify suspects, supporting about 40 arrests, aiding parking workflow—and set the stage for future integration like access control.

Louisiana State University

Joe Thompson

Project Manager, Camera System