CCTV Coverage Calculator.
— Calculator · Coverage · storage · bandwidth · IS 14935 / IEC 62676-4 informed
Surveillance, sized to the building.
Camera density from our planning conventions for each sector, H.265 bitrate per resolution, with IS 14935 / IEC 62676-4 surveillance and NBC Part 4 life-safety practice in view. Tier forces enterprise VMS for healthcare + mall by default.
Camera count
62
56 interior · 6 perimeter
Retention
60 days
Hotel / hospitality default
Recording storage
100.4 TB
RAID-5 on internal bays
Recording bandwidth
155 Mbps
H.265 · continuous record
A planning link that reopens this exact configuration — not a quote.
- nvr / vms
- 2 × 32-ch
- head-end
- 32-ch commercial NVR
- storage
- RAID-5 on internal bays
- poe / camera
- IEEE 802.3at / bt class
- camera density
- 7 per 1000 m²
- density basis
- Planning convention — project experience
- codec
- H.265 smart-codec design rate (ITU-T H.265)
- bitrate (4 mp)
- 2.5 Mbps (planning average)
- bitrate (8 mp)
- 4.0 Mbps (planning average)
- bitrate (anpr)
- 3.5 Mbps (planning average)
- poe / camera
- IEEE 802.3at / bt class
- retention
- 60 days — sector / insurance norm
- critical tier
- No
+ Model assumptions (9)− Model assumptions
Indicative planning sizing only — camera count, storage and bandwidth are concept-level figures, not a final design, BOQ or layout. Camera density is a planning convention from project experience (IS 14935 / IEC 62676-4 set image-quality and application practice, not a fixed cameras-per-area figure), retention follows sector / insurance norms, codec is ITU-T H.265 and PoE follows IEEE 802.3 classes. Bitrates here are smart-codec planning averages; a per-model storage estimate lives in the CCTV Storage Retention calculator. A site survey, AHJ review and consultant sign-off refine camera count, mount locations, IR throw, lens FoV and resolution per zone. Pricing follows a written estimate after technical review.
What changes this estimate
- Site walkover — mounts, lens FoV, IR throw per zone
- Privacy zones and consultant / AHJ review
- Per-model bitrate tables (see CCTV Storage Retention)
- Analytics / ANPR lanes and per-zone resolution
A planning link that reopens this exact configuration — not a quote.
ELV · Surveillance · NBC
Building parameters in, indicative camera count, retention storage and recording bandwidth out. Sized to NBC and IS-grade specifications across 8 sectors.
- Sectors
- 8
- Output
- Indicative
- Codes
- NBC + IS
- Retention
- 30–180 days
· Engineering advisory · CCTV Coverage Calculator
What the camera count predicts about the surveillance estate.
The recommended camera count is the brief-stage budget. The deployment requires the lens-and-mount geometry walkover, the per-camera bitrate measurement and the operator-room handover discipline below.
Deployment observations
- Camera count is the BOQ answer; coverage at the witnessed PPM band is the engineering answer. Identification (250 PPM), recognition (125 PPM) and observation (62 PPM) bands taper with distance — a 50-camera estate may deliver identification across only 18% of the floor plan if the lens-and-mount choice is uniform.
- Per-camera bitrate budgeting against the procurement-stage 2 Mbps default is the leading silent under-spec; H.265 main-profile cameras burst to 6 Mbps in busy lobbies and to 9 Mbps in heavy-motion zones. Storage runs out at 18 days when the spec said 30.
- PTZ cameras carry a 5-7 year service envelope but their preset-recall library is the operational deliverable — patrol presets, alarm presets and operator-recall presets are part of the commissioning hand-over, not an aftermarket configuration exercise.
Redundancy posture
- NVR hot-spare discipline matters more than camera spare count — a failed camera affects one viewpoint, a failed NVR affects 16-64 viewpoints. The AMC inventory holds a named replacement NVR per VMS cluster, not a generic camera-spares pool.
- RAID layout on each NVR (typically RAID-5 or RAID-6) holds through single-disk failure; the AMC inventory holds named replacement disks per NVR class for hot-swap with the existing array preserved.
- VMS service architecture is local-first, supervisor-aggregated — recording continues on each NVR even if the central VMS service is offline. Multi-NVR VMS recovery is a service restart with no data loss.
Environmental considerations
- Outdoor camera enclosures (IP66/67) carry an enclosure-seal refresh on the AMC calendar — every 12-18 months under monsoon exposure, every 24-30 months under dry-climate exposure. Condensation-fog on the lens face is the leading failure mode.
- IR illuminator range bounds night PPM — a 30 m IR-range bullet camera delivers identification PPM at 5-8 m only, recognition at 10-15 m and observation past that. Day PPM and night PPM are separate measurements at commissioning.
- Hilltop and high-wind sites require pole-foundation calculations beyond the catalogue baseline — pole tilt corrupts plate-read accuracy for ANPR and IR coverage for night vision. Foundation depth and rebar profile is specified per pole.
Commissioning discipline
- Per-camera PPM witnessed measurement at commissioning — operator walks a 100-target witness set across day, dusk, night-IR and monsoon profiles for outdoor; the lens and electronic-iris settings are locked against the witnessed profile.
- Patch-panel and PoE port mapping handed over against the architectural floor plan — every camera replacement five years from now is a port-and-cable trace from the architect's drawing, not from a vendor's internal numbering.
- Privacy-zone register (NABH for hospitals, DPDPA for any IT-act-bound facility) is annotated against the camera placement at handover — every camera placement has a written privacy justification that survives an audit.
Lifecycle implications
- PoE camera fleets carry a 6-8 year service envelope under indoor exposure, 5-7 years under outdoor exposure; replacement is like-for-like ONVIF on the existing Cat6 + PoE plant.
- Storage HDDs in the NVR carry a 5-6 year service envelope under continuous capture; the AMC schedule holds a hot-spare disk per NVR class for cold-swap with the existing RAID layout preserved.
- VMS firmware refresh is a configuration baseline export-and-restore exercise; named alarm rules, recording schedules and operator preferences are exported offline before any firmware update and re-loaded after verification.
Expansion readiness
- Camera count expansion (10-20%) typically lives within the existing NVR channel budget and PoE switch port count; beyond that, a new NVR plus a new PoE switch is the minimum incremental scope.
- Analytics-class upgrade (ANPR, face-search, line-cross) from baseline 4 MP is a per-camera and a per-NVR licence exercise on the existing cable plant; AI-class analytics typically require an upgraded NVR class with on-board GPU.
- Multi-site VMS aggregation across geographically separate facilities is supported on most Honeywell and Hikvision VMS classes; the addition is a captive-portal credential exchange and a federation configuration, not a re-cabling exercise.
· Example use
A 70-bed hospital of around 10,000 m² with ten perimeter cameras lands on roughly 110 cameras at 4 MP, the healthcare sector's 90-day retention and around 255 TB of recording storage on an enterprise VMS tier. The coverage and storage land in a defensible band before any vendor walks in. The same building specced casually goes wrong by 30 cameras either way.
· Frequently asked
CCTV coverage —
what people ask first.
Why design to NBC and IS codes?
NBC 2016 Part 4 and IEC 62676-4 govern image quality and application practice — how a camera view must perform, not how many cameras a floor needs. The calculator's per-sector camera densities and retention days are planning conventions drawn from project experience and sector and insurance norms, framed so they hold up in that code conversation; the appointed consultant and the authority set the final schedule.
How accurate is the camera count?
It is a brief-stage count, not a final camera schedule. The calculator budgets cameras per 1,000 m² from sector-specific planning densities — it does not model field-of-view or overlap geometry. Stairwells, lift lobbies, exterior corners and privacy zones still need a real walkover before the drawing is issued.
Does it account for low-light and high-contrast scenes?
No — camera-class selection is a walkover decision, not a calculator output. Entrance lobbies, parking ramps and outdoor courtyards typically justify WDR and starlight-class cameras; the calculator budgets counts, storage and recording bandwidth, and leaves the per-location lens and sensor schedule to the design stage.
What about analytics and ANPR?
Both are optional layers. ANPR cameras need dedicated lanes; people-counting and intrusion-analytics need higher resolution and specific mounting. The tool flags the upgrade band; the design conversation defines the count.
Which brands do you specify?
Hikvision and Dahua for value, Axis and Bosch for premium and defence-adjacent, Hanwha and Avigilon for analytics-heavy estates. We are brand-agnostic at concept stage and brand-specific at BoQ stage — chosen on use case, not on margin.
· Begin
Specifying CCTV
for a real building?
Send the floor plates, the operating context and the retention requirement. We will return a sized design within two working days; pricing follows a written estimate after review.