Background
Lord's Cricket Ground in St John's Wood, London, is not only the spiritual home of cricket, with a distinguished 200-year history. It is also a vibrant sports arena, hosting major international matches, cup finals and county games throughout the summer. Its commitment to modernity has been shown in the state of the art media centre.
Security is a major concern - especially at key events. The ground has had a CCTV system in operation for some years, but last year the cricket ground decided to install a completely new and ultramodern system in time for the 2005 season.
Making the choice
Elstree-based Parker Security was selected to specify and install a system for them. "The brief was one of the larger ones we have dealt with recently," said Parker Security's managing director Ken Parker. "There was a total of 90 cameras around the ground, complete with monitoring and recording equipment, and some 17 access control points. "We specified Siemens Building Technologies Security Products equipment because they could provide a totally integrated, high quality security system."
Parker Security installed Bewator's Granta security management system providing access control and a Bewator Eventys RMC (Remote Monitoring Centre), together with 90 cameras to handle the CCTV end of the contract.
The installation
The main benefit of Bewator's Granta system is that it enables users to connect multiple PC workstations to provide distributed monitoring and control of the system across any number of separate sites - including remote locations, via TCP/IP technology. This is particularly important for the installation at Lord's as it 
allows security monitoring at a number of peripheral points in the ground as well as centrally.
Images from the 90 cameras are processed through the Bewator Visilynx 3i - a powerful, integrated video matrix system - and then fed into the Eventys Digital Video Monitoring System (DVMS). This is an advanced digital and audio recorder/server - effectively a hard disk recorder.
The Granta software integrates with the Eventys DVR platform to allow for event-triggered video recordings. Bewator Eventys has enormous storage capacity (900Gb) and can view real time and recorded footage simultaneously, as well as search events to pinpoint an incident and synchronise all the cameras to the time of an incident and watch it unfold. Its other features include counter monitor function - ideal for managing security for large public access areas, such as recording entrances to public stadiums.
The 17 access points, which have all been fitted with proximity readers to control entry, are linked to an administration PC and supported with cameras placed in key locations. The client produces its own entry cards - up to several hundred being current at any one time - which are individually programmed to only allow the bearer access to specified parts of the ground, at specified times.
Results
"The client was looking for a flexible system that provided discreet but highly effective security," says Ken Parker, "and one which could be totally integrated to enable the whole system to be controlled from a single point."
"The SBT platform allowed us to do that - including integrating another make of camera. What we also now have is a set up that can be expanded whenever we wish, and upgraded as new technology options arrive."
