Wimbledon Serves Up Surveillance

Aug 1, 2004 12:00 PM

This year's Wimbledon Tennis Championships at The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club produced a couple of exciting finishes, a full day's action open to the general public and, thankfully, an event without any security snafus.

As Roger Federer cruised to his second consecutive men's singles title and Maria Sharapova shocked American Serena Williams to win the women's title, they were showcasing their talents under the eyes of a 36-camera network video recording (NVR) system, active throughout the two weeks.

The system includes the Universal Video Management System from PI Vision, Orlando, Fla. The 36 cameras record images at six pictures per second using MPEG2. The NVR replaces an existing videotape based system and gives the tennis club the opportunity to upgrade seamlessly to IP network cameras in the future.

The system, which remained operational after the tournament, allowing security and facilities management staff from a number of PC access stations to view the cameras around the site — thus, there is no longer a need for a central monitoring control room.

“The system enables security and other staff to access the CCTV images easily with their own PCs around the site,” says Richard Oxborrow, the Championships' coordinator and head of security at The All England Club.

The system proved its value when cameras recorded a theft of equipment in the press area, which led to an arrest and recovery of the goods.

Wimbledon uses a mixture of fixed and PTZ cameras. The existing analog cameras have been routed through MPEG encoders and networked into the system.

Security and facilities staff also made use of the CCTV system for visitor management when the tournament opened its gates to the public on a first-come first-served basis for “People's Sunday,” an extra day of action to make up for some rained-out events earlier in the tournament.

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