Fulham Football Club, London's oldest first class football club, has installed Genetec's Omnicast video surveillance system in its 22,000-seat stadium.

When Fulham recently sought a new video surveillance platform, Nicholas Pendlebury, Head of IT Projects at Fulham, brought on EMC, a global provider of information technology services, to assist in the design of a new system. Genetec's Omnicast was chosen for its open architecture and its ability to improve both security and operational processes at once; not only enhancing safety but also crowd control and monitoring procedures.
Fulham required undisrupted video coverage, as well as image quality that would enable operators to zoom in on individual faces in a crowd.

Sixty-three Axis Communications cameras, 25 of which are PTZ, utilizing joysticks for simple camera angle manipulation were installed. Using Axis's network cameras, Fulham is able to use built-in features like motion control for alarm triggers out of hours and privacy masks to limit PTZ field of vision from encroaching on neighbouring private property. Thirty days of archived video are stored on 100 terabytes of EMC Celerra storage that are shared with Fulham's file storage. The Omnicast system has full failover capabilities and the infrastructure is monitored 24/7 via a site-to-site VPN.
Fulham's Omnicast system is used largely for live monitoring on match days, at which time police, Fulham stewards, and medical staff convene in the Control Centre to monitor the tens of thousands of stadium patrons.

"Everyone has praised Omnicast, saying it's one of the easiest systems they've used," said Mr. Pendlebury. Ease of use is especially important given the number of individuals who take turns manning the system, many of whom are not Fulham employees. Video footage can also be called up within seconds instead of days, especially with the added aid of the instant replay feature, providing drastically reduced incident response time.

"Omnicast has addressed our main security needs, but also provided numerous additional features. It has changed our lives. It has made our safety team a lot more responsive and proactive, with less work and less stress. We have even saved money by requiring less staff to review tapes. Between the ability to easily bookmark incidents as they occur, and quick video archive navigation, there is now far less wasted time."

Future plans include an upgrade to Genetec's unified video surveillance and access control platform, the Security Center, and the inclusion of Plan Manager, a feature that enables interactive, spatial mapping of cameras to further facilitate system navigation. Additional plans for a nearby training facility include the installation of 25 high-definition cameras, thermal imaging and deployment of Genetec's license plate recognition system, AutoVu, which can also be unified within the Security Center.

"We are pleased to have been a part of this historic club's evolution. We are aware of the challenges inherent in securing large crowds in these types of facilities, and we have done our utmost to create a platform that quickly and easily serves up the data that is most relevant in this fast-paced environment," said Cavan Kendall, UK National Sales Manager at Genetec.

Phil Doyle, Regional Director for Axis Communications, Northern Europe said: "Using network cameras as part of this security solution means that Fulham will benefit from much more than simply capturing images. Gone are the grainy images so often associated with older CCTV systems. This technology is proven and will provide images that can be used to identify people or objects if an incident occurs."