Four hard working days in Stockholm’s Silicon Valley suburb called Kista are now behind us.
In the Swedish Electrum (the Electrotechnical University), in the offices of the Svensk Elstandard (Swedish Standards), from 27th to 30th of June 2016, a number of meetings of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Technical Committee 79 (TC-79) were held.
For the first time in our security industry history, Australia had two representatives participating in this combined work of TC-79. Vlado Damjanovski, as an expert in the CCTV section of WG-12 and John Fleming as an expert in the Alarms section WG-13.
Just for the record, CCTV has been renamed by the IEC to VSS (Video Surveillance Systems) due to the Chinese delegation noting that CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) in China bears the same acronym for China Central Television.
IEC is an international standards organization which sits under the umbrella of the United Nations and is head quartered in Geneva, Switzerland. IEC is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation that prepares and publishes International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies. These technologies cover a vast range, from power generation, transmission and distribution to home appliances and office equipment, semiconductors, fibre optics, batteries, solar energy, nanotechnology and marine energy.
The IEC name is probably better known among electrical and electronic engineers because all specifications of hardware, like the so-called IEC plug for electronic devices, are specified by these standards.
The IEC’s Technical Committee TC-79 started working in around 2010 on a set of standards on new technologies that covers Alarm and Electronic Security Systems technologies.
A number of Work Groups were created, to include IP CCTV, Access Control, Alarms and Video Intercoms.
Australia did not have opportunity to participate in making of these standards due to the fact that it had the status of an Observing member, until recently.
With some internal work of the El-051 committee members who recognised the need for involvement, in 2014 Australia became a Participating member. With the change of the status we earned the right to vote and contribute to all new IEC TC-79 works.
Working Group 11 deals with Access Control, WG-12 with IP Video Surveillance Systems (VSS), and WG-13 deals with Alarm Systems.
Working Group 12 has created a number of VSS standards. Unfortunately Australia does not have any experts participating in the WG-11, hopefully something that will change in the near future.
For the last couple of years the EL-051 committee at Standards Australia, dealing with Non- Broadcast Video, has managed to take a noted participation in the creating of the 62676 standards, through Working Group 12, where Vlado Damjanovski, Les Simmonds, Ryan Talbot and Jason Prince have represented Australia.
Standards Australia also recognised the need to have a delegate on the Working Group 13 under the same TC-79 committee, working on the Alarm Systems standards set, under the name of 60839.
This was undertaken by John Fleming, ASIAL’s General Manager.
