PANSTADIA & ARENA MANAGEMENT WINTER 2013/14


Clearer, safer vision


Goodison Park Stadium in Liverpool, England, has modernised its video security system with the patented multifocal sensor system Panomera from Dallmeier. Stadium Manager Alan Bowen shares the club’s approach to safety and security.


O


pened in 1892, Goodison Park in Liverpool was the fi rst major


football stadium built in England. The Grand Old Lady, as the stadium is also called, was the fi rst British stadium with double-decker stands on all four sides and the fi rst stadium with a massive three-tiered Main Stand. Home to Everton FC, the current seating capacity of the ground is more than 40,000.


The stadium now has one of the most innovative video security systems in the UK: the patented multifocal sensor system Panomera is at the heart of the new Dallmeier CCTV system. We spoke to Alan Bowen, Stadium Manager at Goodison Park, about the advantages of this new technology.


Alan, why did you opt for modernisation of the existing CCTV system?


Due to the age of the infrastructure in place since the late 1980s, and change in spectators’ behaviour, we at Everton concluded that a complete modernisation of the CCTV system was necessary.


The original system was installed at a time when hooliganism was at its worst in UK football. The CCTV system worked at the time and was a major factor in allowing ourselves and the police to deal with the problem. However, although the levels of hooliganism have greatly diminished now in UK football, other issues such as missile throwing and lighting of fl ares have become the norm rather than the exception.


The existing CCTV system was neither effective in giving us detailed information, live or in playback, nor in providing the image quality and frame rate that we required to cope with


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these new issues. I would state at this point that quality of the recordings is as important as the quality of the live images for us, along with easy use of the front-end graphical user interface, and the ability to quickly and easily retrieve and burn off images for both club and police to identify the offenders and indeed to clarify situations around incidents. We now required a system that was designed to give complete coverage of seating areas in the stadium bowl, and which would also give us the above.


In the 2011-2012 home derby against Liverpool we did have missile throwing incidents which the existing CCTV system could not capture. We at that stage had to make a commitment to the Premier League that we would without delay start to source the CCTV system that would ultimately be able to give us both the live and playback images required to cope with incidents such as this.


What were the main reasons for choosing Dallmeier?


We fi rst met Dallmeier at a FSOA (Football Safety Offi cers Association) conference where they were exhibiting,


Goodison Park’s stand layout and roof-mounted fl oodlighting creates a low-light challenge for CCTV.


Goodison Park Stadium Manager Alan Bowen (right) with James Walker, Managing Director of Dallmeier Electronic UK.


at that time, with their new Panomera multifocal sensor system.


We invited Dallmeier to come along to Goodison Park to do a live match trial with their system. We also invited four other manufacturers during our selection process, who claimed they could provide a CCTV solution to meet our requirements, to take part in separate live match trials.


We also visited other stadiums where HD quality systems were installed and travelled to specifi c manufacturers’ development and manufacturing facilities, in our search for the best quality system to meet our exact requirements, and if possible better them.


Throughout the selection process, Dallmeier time and again demonstrated the best quality images, live and recorded, be they in a normal daylight scenario, or in our second live trial application, by observing the rear of


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