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| With WebCCTV, organisers could provide safety and maintain a worry-free and relaxing atmosphere |
Graspop Metal Meeting is a music festival in Dessel, Belgium featuring heavy metal bands and has taken place each year since 1996. Despite the small size of the festival grounds (upholding a perimeter of approximately 4 kilometres) the festival has seen a continually rising number of visitors over the years, as well as attracting the most popular international bands in the genre. Since the festival's inception, Iron Maiden has headlined it six times. Other bands which have prominently been featured are Slayer, Saxon, Megadeth and Motorhead.
Zwarte Cross is the largest East-Netherland festival and the greatest motor-cycle cross event of Holland that offers a mixture of sports, music, camping and a lot of out of the ordinary activities. In a time span of 3 days this year's programme occupied 20 different stages featuring more than 100 local and international bands of all sorts and sizes: rock, pop, blues, hard rock, tear-jerkers, schlagers, folk music and rock ‘n' roll!
Two large public events - one reliable security solution:
Though different in their nature and audience, Graspop and Zwarte Cross shared one common goal - providing safety and maintaining a worry-free and relaxing atmosphere for its participants through reliable surveillance infrastructure. Between the two festivals such security system had to monitor the area of 14 football fields (about 14 hectares) with more than 278000 visitors.
Moreover it needed the capacity to establish wireless connectivity among all the components of the surveillance system, ensuring the high megapixel data transmission over a large distance. It's quite challenging to get such connection with normal cabling as the distances are too long and the cost becomes too high.
WebCCTV powered by Quadrox was chosen as the superior network video recording solution that perfectly met the festival security goals and resolved the challenges.
Low-cost wireless installation:
The festivals' surveillance infrastructure included WebCCTV NVR and 25 megapixel high-speed dome cameras used for security and back stage control. The cameras were positioned for:
- Overview of the cash registers (where most of the money was handled
- Partial overview of the main stage and front rows before the stage
- General festival area
- Camping area
Installing cable wires to connect all the necessary surveillance components over such a large territory would be extremely expensive as well as labour consuming. In addition the potential damage to the cables during the big public event makes such a system insecure and troublesome. Quadrox mobile installation with wireless connection offered a reliable low-cost and low-maintenance solution.
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| All the dome cameras were visualised in a central control room, where the guards were present 24/7 |
All the cameras were visualised in a central control room, where the guards were present 24/7. WebCCTV provided the ability to visualise, control and record activities at different sites of the festival remotely and allowed guards to do a ‘virtual' patrol instead of a time-consuming browsing of the whole territory.
WebCCTV helped control room guards to efficiently communicate and assist their on-site colleagues during potentially risky situations, often eliminating unnecessary on-site guard interventions and maintaining the friendly and relaxing atmosphere of the festival.
Low bandwidth streaming:
Quadrox solution gives the possibility of live view and recordings playback of megapixel cameras over low bandwidth connections. This feature gives the option to view live images and recordings fast and at low cost.
Both Graspop and Zwarte Cross are gaining more and more popularity each year among both locals and foreign guests. Quadrox solution managed to successfully provide a reliable and low-cost surveillance solution enabling the festival authorities to maintain the reputation and the spirit of the events.
