Athens International Airport upgrades to Bosch digital surveillance solution

For management and display of images, nine Bosch VMS Operator Client Workstations and 37 Bosch 20-inch Monitors are installed

Athens International Airport (AIA) was opened in 2001 to replace the now-closed Athens (Ellinikon) International Airport. It has become increasingly popular as a gateway to Southeast and East Asia. In addition, it is the largest European gateway airport to the Middle East, due to its nearness to the region.

Business objective:

To meet the challenges of the increase in air travel, the airport will be upgraded over several years. The airport is known for its continuous investment in pioneering technology. One of the most important and critical elements in airport security is the video monitoring system. The security solution has to handle open public areas, large fenced areas, and needs to ensure integration with other relevant systems.

Solution:

AIA started with an analogue CCTV solution from Plettac. However, in recent years, it became necessary to upgrade that system to a digital surveillance solution. The first digitalisation was based on Bosch's VIDOS management system with the existing analogue cameras being connected to VIPXPRO encoders and VIP1000E decoders.

For management and display of images, nine Bosch VMS Operator Client Workstations and 37 Bosch 20-inch Monitors are installed

The next step to full digitalisation was done with the Bosch Video Management System (VMS) and uses the following subsystems and equipment: nearly 320 indoor/outdoor fixed and dome colour analogue cameras, two redundant Bosch VMS servers for online management, 220 VIP X1600 module encoders, and 38 decoders using latest compression technology. For management and display of images, nine Bosch VMS Operator Client Workstations and 37 Bosch 20-inch Monitors are installed. The operator interface consists of interactive floor maps of cameras and alarm switch locations with visual and audible alarms. Alarm log files are created automatically, individually and archived daily in the server.

For recording, Bosch's patented Video Recording Manager solution for storage of digital video on decentralised network based iSCSI arrays is used with a total of 66 TB of storage with RAID 5 redundancy.

Video content analysis is incorporated in the system with Intelligent Video Analysis embedded in the encoders.

Result:

After a transition period of three months, the system was successfully implemented and areas of interest have been covered sufficiently. An additional 130 cameras are also planned to be installed in the future.

The expectations of the airport personnel were surpassed and the video surveillance system of Athens International Airport raises the security standards for every other airport in Greece.