Keeping an Eye on the Grand Canyon

Jul 1, 2007 12:00 PM

It seems just about everything about the Grand Canyon is larger than life. Carved out of the Earth's surface some five to six million years ago and plunging to a depth of up to 6,000 feet, it is an awe-inspiring natural landmark.

Famed for its rugged beauty and spectacular scenery, the wilderness park can take characteristics of a clogged Los Angeles freeway during the height of the summer vacation season. Fee collectors — especially those manning the entry lanes at the park's busy South Entrance — are convenient targets of complaints from visiting motorists stressed out by the heat, the long lines and the noise in the backseat.

The vast majority of visitors are well behaved, but with close to five million people passing through the park gates every year, even a small percentage of “bad apples” can generate a logjam of customer service issues.

Until recently, park administrators relied on an old tape-based video recording system to review complaints. “The system was old and failing, so we decided to find a better solution,” says Grand Canyon Fee Program Manager Paul Cox.

Working with Fields Consulting, a Phoenix-based IT services company, park administration identified the requirements for the new system. At the top of the list was the need for a video recorder with a sufficient number of audio channels to record conversations at all four entry lanes at the South Entrance.

Equally important was the need to integrate the video recorders with the park's point-of-sale (POS) retail transaction system. Video quality, storage and reliability were also important factors in choosing a solution.

Fields Consulting selected Ontario, Canada-based March Networks technology as the best fit for the Grand Canyon deployment. The March Networks' Linux operating system embedded in a flash memory was a major factor, says Jason Fields, the IT consulting company's vice president. “It's less vulnerable to viruses, more reliable and makes it easier to replace or add a hard drive to a recorder,” Fields says.

Audio and video are now recorded at all three park entrances, including the South Entrance, the Desert View Entrance 30 miles to the east and the seasonal North Rim entrance across the canyon. Additional recorders are located at the park's largest campground and in the fee management office, where they provide coverage of cash counting rooms and safes. Integration with the POS system helps park administration reconcile occasional cash discrepancies.

“It's a great tool,” Cox says. “Every keystroke on the touch screen is recorded as text and matched up with the video, so we can follow the transaction from start to finish. Just the other day, one of our fee collectors was short, so we pulled up the video and followed the transaction. We could clearly see where the collector had made a clerical error.”

Video from the March Networks system has also been used by various law enforcement agencies to investigate a range of incidents. In one investigation, video evidence assisted in tracking a missing person from the park entrance to the main campground.

“We had a very good video image of the individual and used it to print a photograph of him and display it around the park,” Cox says. “The image was invaluable. With its time-and-date stamp, we used it to confirm that he was indeed on the site and had a good idea of when he went missing.”

For the most part, however, the system is used for resolving visitor complaints. “We go back to the video to make sure that our employees have done the right thing and, often, we find it is the visitor who was out of line,” Cox says.

With between $23 and $24 million a year in park entrance and campground fees being collected, the recording system also helps deter improper handling of cash.

The 4000 Series recorders are equipped with 1 TB of internal storage and provide park administration with approximately 30 days of archived video.

The park is now planning to purchase a March Networks 6316 IP Encoder to accommodate a planned expansion at the South Entrance. The system will record both analog and IP cameras over a Cat-5 cable, delivering high-resolution video in strategic locations while leveraging the park's current camera technology.

The platform will enable an upgrade to an all-IP system in the future.

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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