Location Hierarchy

Meridian VMS organises cameras into a hierarchical location tree. This tree drives the sidebar navigation, access control scoping, dashboard statistics, and multi-site management.

Locations are managed from Settings > Cameras & Sites > Locations in the web interface.

Location Types

The hierarchy has four fixed levels, from broadest to most specific:

Level	Type	Purpose	Example
1	region	Geographical region or country	”Gauteng”, “Western Cape”
2	city	City or metropolitan area	”Johannesburg”, “Cape Town”
3	area	District, campus, or neighbourhood	”Sandton”, “Waterfall”
4	site	A specific physical location	”Building A”, “Gate 1”

Cameras attach to sites only

Cameras and recording servers can only be assigned to site-level locations. You cannot assign a camera directly to a region, city, or area. This enforces a clean organisational structure.

Building the Tree

Creating Locations

1. Navigate to Settings > Locations.
2. The location tree is displayed in an interactive tree view.
3. To add a location, right-click on a parent node or use the Add button.
4. Select the appropriate type (the type must be one level below its parent).
5. Enter a name and save.

Hierarchy Rules

• A region has no parent (it is a root node).
• A city must be a child of a region.
• An area must be a child of a city.
• A site must be a child of an area.
• You can have multiple root regions and any number of children at each level.

Flexible depth

While the four-level hierarchy is the designed structure, the system supports flexible nesting at any level. The type field enforces the logical hierarchy.

Deleting Locations

A location cannot be deleted if it has:

• Child locations — you must delete or move all children first
• Assigned cameras — you must reassign or delete all cameras at that site first

This prevents accidental orphaning of cameras or subtrees.

Subtree Queries

When you select a location in the sidebar, the system automatically finds every camera at every site within that location’s subtree. For example, selecting a region will show all cameras across all cities, areas, and sites beneath it.

This subtree expansion is used throughout the system:

Feature	What it queries
Sidebar camera list	All cameras under the selected location
Dashboard statistics	Camera count, online ratio, storage used for a subtree
Live View	Available cameras when a location is selected
Playback	Camera list filtered to the selected location
Access control	Expanding role location roots into the full set of accessible location IDs

Performance

The database handles subtree queries efficiently for location trees of typical VMS sizes (hundreds to low thousands of locations).

Location Tree in the UI

The location tree appears in the left sidebar of the main application pages (Dashboard, Live View, Playback, Events). It provides:

• Expandable/collapsible nodes — click to expand a region and see its cities, areas, and sites
• Camera counts — each node shows the number of cameras in its subtree
• Online status — visual indicators show how many cameras are recording vs offline
• Quick navigation — clicking a site filters the main view to cameras at that site; clicking a higher level shows all cameras in the subtree

Filtering by Location

When a location is selected in the sidebar:

• Live View shows camera grids for all cameras in the subtree
• Playback filters the camera selector to the subtree
• Events filters to events from cameras in the subtree
• Dashboard shows aggregate statistics for the subtree

Moving Cameras Between Sites

Cameras can be reassigned to a different site by editing the camera and changing its location_id. This is done from:

1. Settings > Cameras — edit the camera and select a new location from the dropdown
2. Settings > Cameras — drag and drop interface (when available) for bulk reassignment

Server assignment is independent

Moving a camera to a different site does not change which recording server it is assigned to. The recording server continues to handle the stream regardless of the camera’s position in the location tree. To move a camera to a different server, edit the server_id separately.

Access Control Integration

The location tree is tightly integrated with the role-based access control system. Each role can be scoped to specific locations:

• A role with no location restrictions has access to all cameras
• A role scoped to a specific region only sees cameras within that region’s subtree
• Multiple location roots can be assigned to a single role

The system expands role location roots into full subtrees using the same approach. See Users & Roles for details.