“The idea was to install
a system to automatically cover the perimeter and give remote access of the CCTV
system that was able to handle live monitoring on game days. What we were
seeking capability and efficiency”

SPORTS grounds
are among the hardest of sites to secure, demanding systems capable of
balancing the demands of quiet weekdays with the mayhem of game or event days
attended by tens of thousands of excited patrons. It’s this dynamic that drove
the design of a new integrated security system and a sound system installed by
Lancorp and Noise Box at Parramatta Stadium.

Parramatta
Stadium is an important venue. Built on the site of Cumberland Oval, which was
laid out way back in 1847, it’s adjacent to Old Government House and surrounded
by landmarks of great historical significance. On game days this ground is the
beating heart of Parramatta
and its security and protection are vital.

“There were a
number of reasons for an upgrade to the security system at Parramatta Stadium,
including the fact we needed to support our perimeter fence with video
surveillance,” venue manager Luke Coleman explains.

“The fact is that
Parramatta Stadium is no longer the village green it was when Cumberland Oval
was located on this site,” says Coleman. “The access management of this venue
and the control of its surrounds are very important.

“Additional
surveillance was also necessary because in the past we’d had a caretaker on
site 24×7 and this service was being discontinued,” he explains.

“Along with these
imperatives, developments nationally and internationally had led to briefings
from counterterrorism people and NSW police.”

“The idea was to install
a system to automatically cover the perimeter and give remote access of the CCTV
system that was able to handle live monitoring on game days. What we were
seeking capability and efficiency.

“One of the
things that really appealed to us about this system was the capability of the
Bosch Integrated System to grow by adding on cameras, and through the future integration
of fire control, access control and alarm management”

“On game days and
event days we might have more than 20,000 patrons on our site and we need a
powerful system that can handle our needs at such times,” he explains. “The system
also needs to be able to protect the site during the week and after business
hours and it needs to do so efficiently.

“There are
particular challenges to securing Parramatta Stadium that are unique to
sporting venues,” Coleman says. “This is not just a stadium – it’s also the
training ground for the Parramatta Eels Rugby League team and they can be here
training at 5am in the morning or long after business hours.

“We also have
other teams that train here too so it’s important that we are able to keep an
eye on things.”

According to
Coleman, as well as a security upgrade the stadium also needed to replace its old
sound system as the legacy audio solution was 12 years old.

“Both these
projects came at the same juncture and after going through a lengthy planning
and tender process the winning security system and the winning sound system
turned out to be Bosch products.”

Integration

It’s important to
highlight early on that the system at Parramatta Stadium was specifically
designed to be managed and to evolve through serious integration. This specification
makes Bosch’s Building Integration System the perfect substrate for future
integration should it be required.

According to
Coleman, Parramatta Stadium has multiple goals for its new video surveillance
and audio visual systems and BIS delivers on all of them.

“One of the
things that really appealed to us about this system was the capability of the
Bosch Integrated System to grow by adding on cameras, and through the future integration
of fire control, access control and alarm management,” Coleman says.

“With BIS, we now
have a launching base to really improve our security and building management
capabilities – and that’s exactly what we were looking for.”

Just as vital is
the role of Bosch’s Intelligent Video Analysis software. IVA allows cameras to
act as an electronic perimeter detection system, alarming in the event of
intrusion and reporting events to a remote control room.

According to
Coleman, something that particularly appealed to Parramatta Stadium about the
Bosch CCTV system was the video analytics of the Bosch IVA.

“The capabilities
of the IVA are impressive,” he explains. “At the time of our decision we looked
at various products on the market focussing on what we wanted to achieve here
and we did some serious investigation – this was the best solution for us.

“We wanted a
system with the power to monitor events by itself and to report those events to
a remote location for review and response – and that’s what we’ve got.”

The system

The system
installed at Parramatta stadium includes Bosch analogue and IP cameras
variously supported by coaxial and Cat-6 cable. Signals from these cameras
travel to switch rooms on either side of the stadium linked by fibre to form a
subnet that can be accessed by a number of workstations on the secure LAN
running customised BIS software modules. The BIS server can also be monitored
over a dedicated WAN by remote monitoring teams using an alarm management
module.

It’s not a
massive system in terms of camera numbers but Parramatta Stadium’s video
surveillance solution does have some unusual and powerful features.

“The PTZ cameras
are Bosch G4 500 Series Auto Domes with auto tracking and image stabilisation,”
says Bosch CCTV sales representative, Nicholas Coghlan.

“The fixed
cameras are from the Dinion IP range and are a quality analogue camera with an
encoder built in which makes them a full IP camera from an installation and
operational perspective,” he explains.

“The domes are
analogue and they run back via the legacy coaxial cabling and in through a
translator/encoder.” 

Coghlan explains
that recording at Parramatta Stadium is undertaken by a 6.5 Terabyte SCSI RAID
5 solution currently running 8 HDDs and with plenty of room for growth – the iSCSI
has 12 HDD bays.

“It’s SCSI
without the PC so image streams from the cameras go directly across the network
to the HDD and are stored as RAID 5.”

“The system has
24-hour recording at 2CIF, 12.5 frames per second on all inputs,” Coghlan
explains.

Installing the system

Specialist
systems integrator, Lancorp Security Systems, designed and installed the entire
network backbone and CCTV system. Project manager Gary Hickey, proposed a
36-core single mode fibre to be installed as a closed loop for future redundancy.
Director Ashley George says that it is the philosophy of Lancorp to provide the
client with cost-effective, modular solutions that allow for future growth.

“We’re only using
12 cores at present,” says Gary. “We’ve allowed 6 duplex cores for security and
6 duplex cores for integration of additional systems in the future – like POS,
access control or additional CCTV.

“The CCTV system
and the audio system are sharing this same fibre network,” he explains. “The
audio system uses one of our 36-core fibres and there’s plenty of space for
further expansion as we go forward.”

Gary says the
installation was simplified by the fact Parramatta Stadium has significant
infrastructure in place with multiple conduits between its 2 major structures.

“In terms of
building the fibre network, we found a vacant conduit and we’re using that as a
dedicated security conduit to get from the East side of the stadium to the West
side,” he explains. “We have draw cables in place should further fibres be
required in the future.

“The current
network architecture means that integration of any additional systems in the
future simply means cabling devices to a switch in a rack on the closest side
of the ground and linked via the fibre to the network.” 

According to Gary, the installation took Lancorp about 2 months.

“About 6 weeks of
this was taken up with 3 techs on site doing the actual installation,” he
explains. “In terms of building the network we had to find space for our gear
and check we could use the areas we thought were most suitable.

“We’ve put in a
new rack for the network switchers and fobots – the space is designed to be
expanded so if we need to add switchers or cable management that’s allowed
for,” says Gary.

According to Gary,
the hardest part of the install was working with Bosch to get the new system to
work on 3000 metres of legacy coaxial cabling.

“The original
Pelco Spectra domes utilised the coaxial cable for video and data transmission
via an existing coaxatron unit, in turn we needed a similar solution for the
Bosch G4 autodomes – so we used the Bosch Bilinx units to integrate them into
the BIS system without running any additional cabling – retaining the existing
coaxial cable for all the PTZs was part of the specification.

“All the IP
cameras have fresh cabling, with the IP cameras getting onto the network across
Cat-6 – there’s a switch on either side of the stadium, connected via duplex fibre
connected through Gbics at each end that go straight into Ethernet switches and
then are hard wired to the cameras’ Ethernet ports,” Gary says.

“Each of the
cameras has its own IP address and once installed we can web browse each camera
and adjust configurations as necessary. Every camera has its own partitioned
space in the iSCSI – 500GB for each camera.  

Meanwhile Lancorp’s
Paul Felton explains that using RG-11 meant there was no need for amplification
and the fibre backbone ensured both sides of the site are electrically isolated
so there was no problem with ground loops often associated with multiple power
supplies.

“There’s no
amplification of any of these cables despite the size of the site,” Felton
says. “The G4 domes have built in compensation and we get 900 metres on RG11
cable – that was plenty in this application.

“We were lucky
with power. All the new fixed cameras have their own power supplies – 2 cameras
per supply with additional power supplies to run the heater/blowers for the
housings for the fixed cameras – we had no other installation challenges.”

Gary says the
specification called for a solution in which everything be wrapped into the
same system – access control, audio, alarms and CCTV. He says Bosch’s BIS was
the perfect management solution, allowing all system components to be managed
from one interface.

“In terms of the
way it’s designed, this is a very flexible CCTV system that offers the stadium usable
perimeter detection after hours but is also usable on game day as a pure CCTV
solution,” he says.

Managing the
system

According to Luke
Coleman, there are 3 types of monitoring undertaken using the BIS solution at
Parramatta Stadium.

“Firstly, we have
monitoring of the 2 main entrances as well as other key camera points viewed on
a work station at reception,” he explains. “Both during the week and after
hours, intelligent video analysis allows the system to be monitored on the
basis of alarm events by a remote security company.”

“This part of the
system goes into alarm when the site’s perimeter is breached and the system
then alerts the remote control room, providing details of the event and
footage.

“The third type
of monitoring we do is game days or event days with our trained security
operators,” he says. “We’ve already had an incident that required us to search
footage and provide video to police – the system certainly proved its worth
then. The footage was very easily uncovered and burned to DVD. 

“From our
perspective what’s very important is that the security system and the audio system
are now in place and it’s just a question of time and budget as to what we
integrate into the system,” Coleman says.

“We’re looking at
the possibility of POS systems in the future, as well as access control, alarms
and additional video surveillance cameras.”

You can’t really
talk about this system without discussing Bosch’s modular Building Integration
System in detail. BIS is built on a suite of PC-based software utilising
windows internet explorer to facilitate total security management and it
achieves these ends by integrating pretty much anything onto a single platform.

According to
Bosch, the sorts of systems that can be integrated by the BIS include fire and
intrusion alarms, evacuation, access-control, CCTV and building-automation
systems. Within its framework, BIS also gives complete status overview of all
connected systems and subsystems, right down to the status of individual cameras
and detectors. It sounds complicated but in practise the BIS is profoundly
simple.

Bosch’s project
manager integrated systems, Paul Donnelley, says the BIS GUI is really a web
browser.

“It’s an
intuitive and simple system to operate,” Donnelley explains. “The GUI has a
video engine with all your control icons. The system is very easy to control –
easy to pan, tilt and zoom. We can follow presets on the camera – you can have
system triggers – there are many different ways to drive the system. You can go
through screens or through the keyboard.”

Donnelley says
BIS also has action plans that relate to events, mandatory buttons that have to
be activated and forms that have to be filled out when events take place.

“Operators can
name cameras to suit themselves and to make their work more efficient. When
they log in, the system displays the system with their personalised camera
names,” he explains. “This system has a quad-head card so it’s possible to
select the monitor on which the cameras are going to be displayed.”

Lancorp says this
particular installation did not have AutoCAD files of the site but Bosch has
instead imported pdf files into AutoCAD to create mapping.

“What we’ve done
in this instance is disable layers in order to drill down to different camera
icons,” he explains. “The system also shows the dynamic state of cameras and
their condition – we can enable or disable camera functions depending on what
rights management wants operators to have.

“When you’re
looking for footage of an event you call up the camera – there’s a time bar and
you use the mouse to expand or contract the time bar – you can speed footage up
and slow it down. There are multiple ways of extracting footage. AVI files –
it’s all quick to deploy, put on memory stick, send via email. You use the
archive player tool to extract video from the iSCSI array.

“As the system
expands we’ll be able to put in other icons for access control points,
registering of alarms. We can put icons on screen because it’s HTML based – you
can add command buttons onto the screen so an operator can manually move all
cameras to preset position one. It’s a highly configurable solution.”

Donnelley says
that the BIS also has alarm manager module and he explains that this is what
the remote control room will use.

“As an alarm
occurs the live image will flash up showing which camera detected the event,
the footage will come up,” he explains. “When alarms or other events occur,
plans or maps can come up to provide information for operators. There are zones
for audio allowing activation of a pre-recorded message.”

According to Donnelley,
from the management GUI it’s possible for authorised users to call up auto
track functions, diagnostics and to see status of the cameras.

“Everything that
comes into BIS, because it is OPC, displays its status,” Donnelley says. “It’s
also possible to activate relays and if you add access control and other
devices to the system BIS becomes an ever more powerful tool. You can use
events from one sub-system to activate devices in other sub-systems of the BIS
– say a fire alarm might release all the remote gates.”

According to Donnelley,
BIS makes everything remotely accessible to authorised users.

“You can set
parameters for PTZs from the web browser – you can set the parameters of the
auto-tracking – program how long the camera views the object, you can jump onto
the IP cameras and set the parameters, you can get onto the iSCSI and make
changes, or you can access the BIS server,” he says.

“Once you’re on
that secure network, everything is accessible. That makes life easier in terms
of support or management of the system,” Donnelley explains.

“This
configuration is not that difficult to do – it took about 2 days to set the
system up as it is now and expansion of this system is just as easy.”

Perimeter IVA
detection

Central to the
system’s ability to function as a perimeter detection solution is Bosch’s
Intelligent Video Analysis software. The IVA 3.5 software is now embedded in
all Bosch’s cameras and encoders and it uses colour, trajectory and changes in
object shape or speed to activate alarms.

According to Bosch’s
Nicholas Coghlan, Intelligent Video Analysis gives operators the ability to
search the history for motion events using event parameters like ‘might not be
caused’ or ‘can be caused’ and he says this makes it easy to narrow down events
during investigations. 

“We have done
another major perimeter system using the IVA set up to detect specific objects
at specific speeds in order to reduce false alarms caused by PE beams,” Coghlan
says. “That’s where Bosch got the operational model for this perimeter solution
and it’s working well.”

Meanwhile, Lancorp’s
Paul Felton says the way the perimeter system works in the field is that if
there’s an alarm event the IVA-equipped devices will raise an alarm at the
monitoring company and operators will be able to access the system and see
what’s happening in real time.

“The PTZ’s are
incorporated into the perimeter line and they’re also running motion detection
and have Autotrack built in,” Felton explains.

“So if an
intruder passes one of the AutoDome’s they’ll be tracked automatically with all
scenes recorded.”

Felton says that
although light levels are low at the stadium during the night, Bosch’s Dinion
485 fixed cameras have impressive low light performance and the G4 domes are
good quality day/night cameras – this means the IVA is getting the light in
needs for effective operation.

“There’s not a
lot of light in this applications but we’ve had a lot worse situations and IVA
technology handles these conditions easily,” he explains.  

“Intelligent Video
Analysis gives operators the ability to search the history for motion events using
event parameters like ‘might not be caused’ or ‘can be caused’ and he says this
makes it easy to narrow down events during investigations”

One of the great
strengths of the Bosch IVA system is its powerful forensic search capabilities
and these give remote operators and management plenty of support in the event
of an incident.

The way it works,
according to Bosch, is that content analysis information, in the form of
metadata, is generated and stored with the video images. This recorded
metadata, comprising simple text strings describing specific image details, is
much smaller and easier to search through than the recorded video.

Importantly,
alarm events are generated at the camera site and only video footage alarm
events is transmitted to the remote control centre. This is brilliant for Parramatta
Stadium as it reduces WAN traffic on the network. Also important for Parramatta in terms of
efficiency while maintaining high levels of security, the IVA reduces human
intervention while bringing to the attention of operators only actual intrusion
events.

Integrating sound

WHILE the
original system at Parramatta Stadium was going to be purely CCTV, when a Bosch
audio system was selected as part of a separate tender it became obvious that installing
systems with the potential for future integration through BIS would be an
excellent result.

While installation
of the audio system was handled by Noise Box, the system was designed by the
Bosch Communications Group, according to senior engineer/manager, Bryan
Davidson.

“We designed the
complete audio solution which included acoustic design using E.A.S.E. (Electro
Acoustic Simulation for Engineers) of the entire stadium along with the audio
DSP and amplification,” Davidson explains. “We were able to build a complete 3D
acoustic model which aided in the correct loudspeaker selection and acoustic
prediction/simulation.”

Davidson says the
entire audio chain is controlled by IRIS-Net (Intelligent Remote Integrated
Supervision) Network, which is the platform for integrating and controlling all
audio equipment at Parramatta Stadium.

“IRIS-Net is
controlling two NetMax N8000’s one located in the Eastern Stand and the other
located in the master control room in the Western Stand,” says Davidson. “The
two N8000’s are linked via an optical fibre between stands and handle all
signal processing such as equalisation, limiting, signal delay, etc, and these
then feed the signal to the Electro-Voice power amplifiers for their specific
loudspeakers.”

The audio system
at Parramatta Stadium has some neat features, too.

“What I did in
this stadium which is fairly unique is to closely space the loudspeakers for
both the lower and upper seated areas,” Davidson explains. “Traditionally
clusters are mounted containing both the down firing and back firing loudspeakers
and are spaced at around 10-12 metres apart.

“Unfortunately,
by doing this what you end up with is many late arrivals of the sound which
unfortunately are perceived as echoes we’ve all heard them at stadiums. At
Parramatta Stadium I close spaced the loudspeakers at 6 metre spacing’s and
interleaved them.”

Davidson explains
that this means there is one down firing loudspeaker then 6 metres along there
is a back firing loudspeaker then another 6 metres along another down firing
loudspeaker and so on.

“What this does is
keep the loudspeakers arrival times below 50 milliseconds and therefore your
brain interprets the arrivals as direct sound, which means virtually no echoes.
In fact you can walk both the lower and upper seating areas and not hear any
echoes…it is sensational.”

At Parramatta
Stadium Davidson worked very closely with the audio integrator Noisebox – in
fact there seems a high degree of ownership from everyone involved in this job.

“Noisebox was the
appointed contractor to install the audio system and did a great job,” Davidson
says. “I always assist the contractors on high level installations such as this
so as to ensure everything is installed correctly and according to my design.”

Overall the audio
system at the stadium comprises a Zx3PI, a Zx1i, CP-series amplifiers, an EViD
C8.2 and a NetMax.

“The E-V ZX3PI
has got to be the best 12-inch 2-Way loudspeaker on the planet, and it was
chosen because of its pattern control, power handling, and weatherisation
characteristics and of course, its great sound,” says Davidson.

“These speakers are
employed largely to cover the upper and lower seating areas. The Zx1i are for
an area in front of the Ray Price lounge that has an acoustic shadow caused by
some extended roofing. These voice perfectly with the Zx3PI’s.

“There’s is a row
of 32 EViD C8.2 ceiling speakers located right up the back of the upper seating
areas in both stands to cater for the last two rows and to avoid any perceived
slap back from the glass,” says Davidson.

“E-V Compact
Precision power amplifiers power the entire pro sound system along with
Dynacord Paramus Contractor Series power amplifiers for the 100-Volt line EViD
4.2T surface mount loudspeakers around the entrance and back of house.”

According to
Davidson there were a number of challenges with the audio installation at
Parramatta Stadium.

“The main
challenge of course was the open seated areas at the Northern and Southern ends
of the stadium,” he says. “We were unable to mount loudspeakers on poles to get
them close to the audience so we used the traditional method of mounting medium
format horns on the ends of the roof on the Eastern and Western stands to cover
these areas.

“This always
presents an acoustic challenge and of course the issue of late arrivals of
sound from opposite horns. I overcame this to a large extent by using Zx3PI’s
to fill the seated areas underneath the horns and by careful time alignment and
filtering was able to eliminate most of the problem,” Davidson explains.

“All in all it’s
a fantastic result and one that costs far less than some other stadiums and
sounds far better.”