Zayed Sport City in Abu Dhabi, the largest sports complex in the United Arab Emirates, has deployed a camera-based security system powered by AI to boost safety of sports fans, athletes and staff during sporting events.
"Streamlining our processes with this system has allowed us to work more efficiently. The automated security alerts and the HD Video help us to respond quickly and work with peace of mind,” said Khalid Al Mutawa, director of operations at Abu Dhabi Entertainment Company.
Abu Dhabi Entertainment company manages and operates Zayed Sport City, whose facilities include
a stadium, ice rink, bowling centre and tennis centre among others. Surrounding these facilities are an additional five outdoor festival spaces of varying size, divided among natural grass pitches, a 600sqm indoor event space, plazas and tarmac areas.
Keeping an eye on safety
With more than 1.7 million people visiting Zayed Sports City each year, ensuring safety means keeping track of all areas of the complex during sports events, and to respond quickly if anything goes wrong.
Two major challenges confront the complex management when the decision was made to install a site-wide security systems.
As hundreds of cameras are needed to provide full coverage of the complex, it would be quite difficult for the security team to manually process the vast amount of video streams that would be generated.
Furthermore, many facilities in the complex have high ceilings. This means that high-resolution security cameras are needed to provide clear imaging at significant distances, with cameras often mounted high up on pillars, posts, or ceilings.
To address these challenges, Zayed Sport City needed a security and safety system that could protect all areas of the site – without the excessive workloads associated with manual approaches.
Camera-based system with AI capabilities
Abu Dhabi Entertainment has tapped Hikvision to provide the camera-based security system and the control room equipment needed to guard Zayed Sport City around the clock.
More than 670 Hikvision cameras with different functions and types were deployed in two major project phases. These are being used to protect all of the sports venues and facilities inside the Zayed Sport City, as well as spectator seating areas and parking areas.
Hikvision delivered high-definition imaging with its with 2- and 4-megapixel resolution across the Hikvision bullet and PTZ camera fleet.
Some of the cameras have on-board AI capabilities to automate key security tasks. For example, cameras installed at the stadium parking areas have built-in license plate recognition capability, which increases the efficiency of parking operations.
Indeed , AI capabilities also allow the security team to search back through video footage much more quickly and easily when investigating accidents and incidents.
All Hikvision cameras have been integrated seamlessly into the Zayed Sport City Video Management System (VMS). This minimised deployment cost and risk and is ensuring that all elements of the solution work in harmony to protect visitors to the stadium.
"It was critical for us that cameras and other equipment deployed in phase 1 and phase 2 would integrate easily with our currently used VMS, with no compatibility issues," said Mutawa. "Hikvision offered a fast and easy solution, and full coverage of the site was installed on time."
A cost-effective system
According to Mutawa, the new Hikvision solution at the sports complex allows many routine security tasks to be handled automatically - reducing the risk of missed incidents, speeding up responses, and reducing staff workloads and costs.
With the ability to search through video footage quickly and easily to investigate accidents and incidents, the security team is achieving major time savings compared with reviewing video manually.
Moreover, the security team saves a substantial amount of time now that they do not have to search through video footage manually - making it easy for them to investigate accidents and other incidents.
"The Hikvision system's AI features are very valuable in investigating incidents and it reduces the time required by our staff significantly," said Mutawa. "This frees our security team up for our core activity: keeping visitors safe and ensuring that the complex is secure at all times."
The fact that Hikvision cameras use onboard AI capabilities has made it cost-effective for Zayed Sport City to deploy the latest security technologies quickly, across the entire site.
Additionally, new AI capabilities – such as the ability to locate and help unaccompanied minors or to count people to prevent crowding – can be added cost-effectively in the future, with no need to replace existing control room equipment or software.
