Providing access control for 12 million attendees.

Aug 1, 1998 12:00 PM, GEORGE PARTINGTON

It's Expo Time! If all goes according to the plans of Jose Cartaxo Vicente, Expo '98 will be a peaceful, summer-long celebration in Lisbon, Portugal, where some 12 million visitors enjoy - and learn from - thousands of exhibitions, cultural programs and amusements dedicated to the theme, "the oceans, a heritage for the future." Vicente, a soft-spoken man who commands respect wherever he goes, is one of those responsible for safety and security at Expo '98, the last world exposition of the millenium. A little more than five years ago, Portugal won the privilege of hosting Expo '98 with an ambitious proposal to honor the oceans. Parque Expo S.A., the public company formed by the government to organize the event, proposed to do the impossible: It would reclaim the Olivais docks along the Tagus River in Lisbon for the expo site. The 10-kilometer stretch of harbor, from which Portugal built a colonial empire nearly 500 years ago, had become an all-but-abandoned industrial wasteland, dotted with shanties and a decaying electrical plant. Parque Expo S.A. also promised to rebuild the country's infrastructure with new roads, metro stations and improvements to the Lisbon airport, all of which would jump-start the Portuguese economy and its sluggish tourism industry. Finally, learning from previous expositions, Parque Expo S.A. said they would create an exposition site that would remain vibrant, popular and economically viable long after Expo '98 ends on Sept. 30, 1998.

Big plans The organizers' ambitions extended into their early plans for security and building management. Eighteen months before the event was scheduled to begin (it opened May 22, 1998), Parque Expo S.A. hoped to design a totally customized system, with 25 workstations monitoring and controlling more than 30 buildings and pavilions erected across the fairgrounds. They wanted photo credentials with smart card chips and read/write capabilities, plus support for multiple access control technologies, including proximity and magnetic stripe. The system had to be 100 percent stable and reliable; its network communications had to be extremely fast so that credentials issued at remote, gate-side badging stations would be recognized moments later when presented at a nearby reader. Finally, organizers thought they could write their own software code to integrate access control with their main server.

A partnership pays off Over the past 15 years, Lu's Guerra and Daniel Vernuccio have collaborated on other prestigious security installations in Portugal. Guerra is director of sales for Cerberus Engenharia, a subsidiary of the Swiss group Cerberus AG and a market leader for installing and servicing high-end building control systems in Portugal. Vernuccio is an international sales manager with WSE (formerly Westinghouse Security Electronics). The men share mutual trust and respect, and landing the high-profile Expo '98 as a customer became their common goal. Initially, the team won the contract to secure the construction site. But when it was time to secure the exposition itself, Guerra and Vernuccio fought an uphill battle to convince expo organizers that the best solution to their requirements lay not in new, totally customized equipment, but in a proven, off-the-shelf system. In meetings that frequently ran into the early morning hours, often without refreshments or breaks, the men explained how WSE's SE 6300 security management host system and integrated components could be installed in time to meet organizers' deadlines and provide 100 percent system stability. Guerra persuaded the organizers to reconsider and ultimately abandon the feasibility of using smart cards by explaining how the technology then available in Portugal was an impractical solution for the expo's security needs. The SE 6300 operates on the stable and secure UNIX platform, which can support large databases and extensive networking configurations. The system has been used reliably by hundreds of customers since 1992, and it can support 25 workstations. The controllers can support multiple access control technologies, and the company offers a selection of digital proximity and magnetic stripe readers. Finally, WSE entered into a business partnership with DataCard Corp., a manufacturer of card-issuance systems. DataCard's direct-to-card-printing badging systems could be interfaced to the SE 6300. The organization ultimately awarded Cerberus contracts worth an estimated $5 million for access control, fire and intrusion detection, CCTV and support services. The agreements called for what Guerra describes as "a danger-management system" for the perimeter and all entrances to the park, as well as administrative buildings and the media center, selected pavilions and office buildings, and the Oriente Station, which is served by rail, subway and bus systems and connects the main entrance to the exposition grounds. Cerberus would also provide 24-hour on-call support during the exposition.

System design As specified, the SE 6300 host allows security administrators to monitor, control and report on system activity for 25 terminals located across the exposition site. The host and a redundant system for backup reside on Hewlett-Packard Vectra model personal computers with 166 MHz Pentium processors. The system includes dozens of NexSentry 4100 Series controllers with 32-bit microprocessors and more than 100 DR 4205 digital proximity readers and magnetic stripe readers. The components communicate via standard RS-485 S-Net protocol. The security network interfaces with 10 NexSentry Imaging Solutions badging systems with DataCard's QuikWorks software and direct-to-card ImageCard III printers. These badging stations are located at park entrances for on-site accreditation. Over the four months, they expect to issue full-color photo ID credentials to more than 80,000 catering and maintenance employees, exposition and administrative staffs, performers, journalists and VIPs. Credentials issued are WSE's NexKey and QuadraKey multiple-technology digital cards. The security network resides on the expo's 100BaseT local area network (LAN) with a fiber-optic backbone. This strong, high-speed network is especially important for system reliability and ensuring that information entered at remote locations is communicated all-but-immediately to the central database.

The danger-management system installed by Cerberus also includes 2,000 fire detectors by Algorex and 20 of its own control panels for fire detection, as well as CCTV equipment by Burle in selected sites, including the Oriente Station. Philips provided CCTV for monitoring traffic around the expo site; Sony equipment is monitoring street traffic within the grounds. Prosegur, Securitas and other local companies are providing personnel for building and campus security.

Challenges to system installation and operations Cerberus met its deadline of January 31, 1998, for delivering system components to Parque Expo S.A. By then, Pedro Fernandes, an electrical engineer for Cerberus, had attended classes at WSE's University of Security Electronics in Santa Clara, Calif., and was prepared to train expo employees on the equipment. Unfortunately, progress at the exposition was slower than anticipated, and the dwindling time before opening day began to threaten system installation and operation. For example, Cerberus engineers faced a number of challenges in installing the equipment - the Knowledge of the Seas Pavilion, alone, has surfaces of concrete, wood, limestone, glass bricks and iron. As construction deadlines slipped, the time frame for meeting these challenges evaporated. Eventually, Cerberus had 20 employees and subcontractors on site installing equipment in buildings as they were completed in time for opening day. And while Fernandes was able to train the few security managers who are supervising system activity throughout the exposition, the 50 employees who are operating the remote terminals and badging stations were not hired until just days before the opening ceremonies. As a result, they received only minimal preliminary training and would have to master the equipment on the job.

The party begins Opening day of Expo '98 was sunny and temperate, reflecting the optimism associated with a world's fair. The accreditation employees looked smart in their multihued blue uniforms, and if these patient, bright, young adults were not completely comfortable with the equipment, they would be soon. First day attendance figures portended a busy summer: Already 30,000 names had been entered in the access control database, and the director of accreditation, Paulo Taveira, had increased the predicted total number of badges issued per day from 900 to 1,300. For Guerra and Vernuccio, opening day jitters mingled with a sense of pride in the installation and the entire exposition. Four months of potential problems and unknown challenges lay ahead. Guerra seemed most concerned about potential human errors affecting system operations. Vernuccio, while confident, admitted that it is the first system he knows of to handle such a tremendous volume of daily activity. Vicente, whose career in security stretches over two decades (his honorary title is "Mr. Security" in Portugal), was introspective. When pressed, he admitted that he was most concerned about maintaining the balance between security and fun. "This is not a prison," he explained. "We want our visitors to be comfortable and to enjoy our Expo. Still, we have to do whatever we can to prevent problems from happening, and to be prepared for them, should they occur."

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