Camera Placement That Actually Produces Usable Evidence
Two numbers decide where a camera goes, and both are settled before anyone picks a model: how much of the frame a person has to fill, and the angle between the lens and that person's face. Dubai's security regulator SIRA sets the first as a percentage of screen height for a standard target 1.6 metres tall, and the second as a hard angular limit. Resolution cannot recover a face the geometry never pointed at.
The frame size you are actually buying
SIRA's Standard and Technical Specifications of the Security Systems defines each view range by how much of the monitor a 1.6 metre target fills: Identification at least 120 percent, Recognition at least 50 percent, Observation at least 25 percent, Detection at least 10 percent. Turn those percentages around and you get the size of scene each camera is allowed to see, which is what really drives how many you buy.
At Identification, 1.6 metres must fill 120 percent of frame height, so the frame can only be 1.33 metres tall at the subject, or about 2.37 metres wide on a 16:9 sensor. One Identification camera therefore covers a little over two metres of doorway. A four metre wide entrance in Business Bay needs two. At Recognition the frame grows to 3.2 metres by 5.7 metres, and at Detection it reaches 16 metres by 28 metres, which is why one corner camera can watch a whole warehouse floor for movement and still be useless for naming anybody.
Mounting height is a standoff calculation
For an Identification view, SIRA allows a horizontal angle of no more than 45 degrees left or right of the subject, and a vertical angle of no more than 20 degrees above or below the horizon line of that 1.6 metre target. The vertical limit is the one that gets broken, because installers mount to the nearest soffit and aim down. The tangent of 20 degrees is 0.364, so the minimum distance to the subject is the height above the 1.6 metre line multiplied by 2.75.
| Camera mounting height | Height above the 1.6 m line | Minimum standoff for Identification |
|---|---|---|
| 2.4 m | 0.8 m | 2.2 m |
| 2.7 m | 1.1 m | 3.0 m |
| 3.0 m | 1.4 m | 3.9 m |
| 3.5 m | 1.9 m | 5.2 m |
| 4.0 m | 2.4 m | 6.6 m |
| 5.0 m | 3.4 m | 9.3 m |
The classic failure is a dome at 3.0 metres sitting 1.5 metres inside the door, aimed at the threshold. That works out at 43 degrees below the horizon, double the Identification limit, and it produces a clean overhead view of the top of everybody's head. The fix is rarely a better camera. It is moving the camera back along the approach so the subject walks towards it, or dropping it to shoulder height on a side wall and accepting a narrower lane of coverage.
The useful half of the rule is that it binds only Identification. Recognition and Observation allow up to 45 degrees above the horizon line, and Detection allows up to 75. At a 3.0 metre ceiling, the same position needs 3.9 metres of standoff to identify, 1.4 metres to recognise and 0.4 metres to detect. Settle the purpose of each position first and the mounting plan falls out of it.
Why the percentage rule bites harder than the pixel figure
SIRA publishes a pixel density fallback for each view, allowed only in exceptional cases with prior approval, and for Identification that fallback is 300 pixels per metre. The screen height rule is far stricter than its own fallback. A frame 1.33 metres tall recorded at 1080p carries about 810 pixels per metre, and at 4K about 1,620. Designing to 300 and assuming the view passes is a reliable way to fail commissioning.
That gap is the nature of a percentage rather than a drafting error. IEC 62676-4 handles the same problem with a table titled Person screen height equivalent for different digital resolutions, expressed in percent, because the screen fraction a person occupies and the pixels landing on that person are different quantities. The full view table and the rest of the rule book sit in our walk through of what SIRA's manual actually requires.
Light is a placement decision, not a settings menu
SIRA requires that any camera facing a natural or artificial light source, directly or reflected from polished surfaces, be a Wide Dynamic Range camera with a gain ratio of at least 110 dB. The phrase about polished surfaces does a lot of work in a Dubai building. A marble lobby floor in DIFC, a mirrored lift lobby in JLT and a full height glazed facade all throw light back at the lens, so a camera pointed inward from the entrance falls in that category even though it never faces the sun.
The same section requires auto iris wherever lighting conditions change, and an IR cut filter that switches to monochrome when visible light disappears. Axis Communications makes the placement consequence explicit in its image quality troubleshooting guidance: do not direct the infrared beam at nearby walls or ceilings, windows, or other objects with high reflectivity. A camera tucked a few centimetres from a plasterboard bulkhead will light that bulkhead beautifully and leave the person in shadow.
Axis also illustrates sun position with two cameras on one building, where one takes direct sunlight into the sensor in the evening and the other avoids it all day. In a tower with east and west glazing that is a twice daily event at fixed times, landing on the entrance cameras exactly when people arrive and leave. Walk the site at 07:30 and again at 17:30 before the brackets go up.
Moving people are the hardest part of the frame
Shutter speed is the time the sensor spends collecting light, and anything moving during that window smears across the image. Axis gives one fiftieth of a second as a worked example, and in a dim lobby a camera will choose something that slow by itself to keep the exposure balanced. The 2009 Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, Chapter 4E, uses 3.5 feet per second, or 1.07 metres per second, as the pedestrian walking speed for clearance timing. At that pace a person travels 21 millimetres during a 1/50 second exposure.
Twenty one millimetres sounds harmless until you put it in an Identification frame only 1.33 metres tall. It is 17 pixels of lateral smear at 1080p, laid across the facial detail the view exists to capture. Shortening the shutter fixes the blur and raises gain, which raises noise, so the real fix is positional. Put the Identification camera where people are slow and facing it: a turnstile, a reception desk, or a door that has to be pulled rather than pushed.
The four metre rule and what it costs later
SIRA requires cameras installed at four metres and above to have remote zoom and focus, which turns a high mount into a different purchase, since every lens adjustment otherwise means a lift booking and a permit. Outdoor cameras must be IP66 or sit in IP66 housings, and the manual says they are to suit the Gulf environment of high temperature, humidity and dust. Cameras with microphones are prohibited without SIRA permission, which matters because plenty of models ship with audio enabled.
Dust is the quiet one. A camera on a loading bay in Jebel Ali or an external corner in Dubai Silicon Oasis builds a haze within weeks, and Axis notes that dust, water droplets and spider webs on the bubble reduce image quality substantially. Put a cleaning interval in the handover document next to the recorder sizing and retention figures, because a dirty dome fails silently while the recorder keeps writing.
Prove the view on site, because the standard says to
IEC 62676-4, Video surveillance systems for use in security applications, Part 4: Application guidelines, moved to Edition 2.0 on 9 October 2025, replacing Edition 1.0 of 29 April 2014. The 2014 edition is clear in its definitions that detect, observe, recognise and identify are functional purposes of a camera, judged by what an operator can reliably do, rather than pixel counts. Identify, at clause 3.1.19, is the ability to identify an individual beyond reasonable doubt.
That edition also carries three normative annexes aimed at proving it on site: Annex B, a test protocol covering face selection, motion and scoring criteria for faces and vehicle registration numbers; Annex C, an image quality method built around an A3 printed target; and Annex E, detection response testing with moving and camouflaged targets. The standard expects somebody to stand in the scene and be recorded. Most UAE fit outs are signed off against a drawing instead, and the gap shows up when the police ask for footage. Before the installer demobilises, have a colleague of about 1.6 metres walk each approach, then view the clip on the control screen rather than a laptop.
Where Codeeo Tech fits
We supply the hardware rather than install it, so the placement work above belongs to your SIRA approved contractor. What we can check is that the equipment on the schedule matches the views the design claims: the WDR rating, the IP rating for external positions, and remote zoom and focus on anything above four metres. Surveillance stock sits under D-Link on the shop, alongside the switching and Power over Ethernet budget the cameras draw from, and our comparison of IP and analogue cameras for a UAE site covers the cabling consequences. Send the camera schedule and view list through the contact page and we will quote against it.
Cover photo: Interior DAMAC Properties metro station 2011 by Ole Bendik Kvisberg, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).
