Avigilon , a provider of HD and megapixel video surveillance systems, announced the City of Vancouver deployed its HD surveillance system during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games to provide situational awareness to city-emergency-management staff and the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) in their effort to maintain public order and safety at the main pedestrian corridors in the city’s downtown core while respecting the privacy of individuals.
Avigilon , a provider of HD and megapixel video surveillance systems, announced the City of Vancouver deployed its HD surveillance system during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games to provide situational awareness to city-emergency-management staff and the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) in their effort to maintain public order and safety at the main pedestrian corridors in the city's downtown core while respecting the privacy of individuals.
Facing an influx of millions of visitors during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games, the City of Vancouver recognized the need for a real-time situational awareness tool that could provide all agencies with an up-to-the-minute view of what was going on in key areas of the city, including Granville Street, Robson Street and Hamilton/Mainland Street in the city's entertainment district.
"The Avigilon HD surveillance system is a powerful, flexible and scalable end-to-end surveillance solution that gave us a bird's-eye view of the downtown core during the Olympic Games, unobtrusively delivering the situational awareness we needed to ensure public order and safety while maintaining privacy rights," said Kevin Wallinger, Director of Emergency Management for the City of Vancouver. "With the Avigilon surveillance solution in place, we gained faster access to critical information that we used to mitigate potentially difficult situations."
Robson Street, Granville Street, and Hamilton/Mainland Street corridors in downtown Vancouver were monitored 24/7 using the Avigilon HD surveillance system. At the Granville corridor, 14 5-megapixel Avigilon HD cameras, two 11-megapixel cameras, and two 16-megapixel cameras were installed at intersections for maximum situational awareness while PTZ cameras were connected to 11 Avigilon analog video encoders for improved performance. At Robson Street and Hamilton/Mainland Street, a 5-megapixel HD camera along with additional PTZ cameras connected to 20 Avigilon analog video encoders were wirelessly connected to several city-owned facilities where fiber infrastructure was available. The City also installed six 5-megapixel HD dome cameras with integrated IR illumination and nine PTZ cameras connected to three Avigilon analog video encoders at two additional Olympic live entertainment sites. These installations were connected to the network via the City's fiber backbone.
Emergency Operations Centre staff managed the Avigilon HD surveillance system using Avigilon control senter network VMS (NVMS) with HD stream management on five workstations and stored up to 21 days of footage on four servers. Additional workstations were set up at the Vancouver Police Department and the City of Vancouver Transportation Operations Centre for added monitoring.
The Avigilon HD surveillance system delivered full situational awareness to the City of Vancouver and VPD at key sites during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, leading to improved communication between all agencies and the most strategic and effective crowd management possible. With clear access to real-time and archived events, the City was able to respond strategically to incidents and deploy only the necessary resources required, resulting in better public control and cost-savings. Managers also enjoyed faster access to critical information, receiving information at least 30 minutes faster than before to proactively mitigate situations much more effectively than before. Avigilon's flexibility, scalability, and intuitive software met the challenges of a complex and time-sensitive project, and could be easily adjusted to meet new requirements on the fly.