Conversion to CCTV

Winners of the Celtic Cup and runners-up in the Heineken Cup, the professional arm of the Irish Rugby Football Union (Ulster Branch) – which plays under the banner of Ulster Rugby – is the foremost professional sporting club in Northern Ireland. Residing at the famous Ravenhill Stadium, the club hosts competitions ranging from the finals of club and school competitions through to Under-10's Mini Rugby and the senior club Cup Finals.

Ravenhill is considered to be the spiritual home of Northern Irish rugby, staging over 40 games every season and regularly drawing capacity crowds of 12,500 enthusiastic fans.

The ever-increasing popularity of rugby is helping to support the Sport For All Campaign in the Province, manifested in growing attendance figures for UR. This has served to highlight a number of issues demanding the immediate and undivided attention of Ulster Rugby’s event organisers.

Working in conjunction with the Sports Council of Northern Ireland, David Boyd – domestic manager for the Irish Rugby Football Union – looked into the salient issues pertaining to Health and Safety, the identification of potential troublemakers, general crowd control and overall ground security at the Ravenhill Stadium.

Following this general management and security audit, a proposal and tender document was developed to ‘procure’ a modern, comprehensive security systems solution.

The contract to install the new surveillance set-up was won by ViS Security Solutions of Belfast, who had themselves conducted a thorough review of the site and then addressed Ulster Rugby’s requirements within a detailed and thoroughly professional project bid.

“The Sports Council of Northern Ireland showed its support for what we wanted to do with a generous grant,” explained Boyd to SMT. “This covered 90% of the installation costs. The new surveillance system has been configured by ViS so that we can now manage large match day crowds far more effectively than was previously the case. The CCTV system allows us to direct any of the 40-to-90 stewards who may be on duty straight to the scene and deal with situations quickly and efficiently.”

Coverage is comprehensive

The surveillance set-up uses an array of vandal and weather-resistant dome cameras offering full colour, high resolution images. These units also feature automatic colour/monochrome switching for improved low-light imaging, specified to provide detailed pictures across the variety of lighting conditions present throughout the ground and deep into the 3,500-capacity Grandstand areas.

Due to the Ravenhill Stadium being located within a densely-populated residential area, cameras are used to check the flow of vehicular traffic over a vital ‘feeder’ road both prior to and after each match. Direct radio links to the local Police Control Room help ensure that the road remains clear so that traffic congestion is never a problem.

At the ground itself, the CCTV system is also used for managing access to the limited amount of spaces available in the VIP Car Park.

The cameras at Ravenhill Stadium are programmed to perform a pre-determined ‘virtual’ sweep at the beginning of each fixture. Crowd footfall is constantly monitored and assessed, allowing any ‘bottlenecks’ (which may occur at the ground’s Park and Ride drop-off points, or at the turnstiles) to be managed

Reassuring local residents that their rights to privacy are being upheld against the possible improper misuse of the powerful observation system, the dome cameras feature a built-in privacy zone for masking-out house windows that might otherwise be in full view (these being situated within an adjacent residential area, through a corner gap between the ground’s Grandstand and the terracing areas). If this solution were not in place, Boyd and his team would risk flouting elements of the Data Protection Act 1998.

The CCTV system operators keep a watchful eye on programme sellers and check the progress of queues at each turnstile, communicating with officials on the ground who can then open or close access gates.

If an area of the stadium looks to be over-occupied or under-occupied, direct radio contact with club officials allows the CCTV Control Room operators to request that an ‘intelligent’ course of action be taken.

Prevention of overcrowding

A major problem in years gone by has been overcrowding caused by unauthorised access. An adjoining, low-lying, flat-roofed area by the Grandstand had enabled local youths to gain unlawful access for certain matches. Not only did this lead to a loss of revenue for Ulster Rugby, but also the additional problem of ‘wild card’ boosting of crowd densities. This weak point has now been well and truly reigned-in, with close area monitoring the order of the day. Stewards can be deployed to this area immediately the CCTV operators spot any unwanted interlopers.

The area surrounding the field of play is also highly scrutinised during key matches. Ulster Rugby has contractual obligations to a variety of heavyweight corporate sponsors. A novel use of the surveillance system ensures that cameras spot any advertising signage that may be unintentionally obscured by passionate fans’ flags, or by members of the press and photography corps. Stewards can then be deployed to those parts of the ground in an instant, keeping the corporate sponsors happy!

The Ulster Rugby CCTV system employs a hard disk recorder that records images in real-time and continuously on match days, providing evidential-quality footage if required. Ulster Rugby uses the unit in conjunction with a time-lapse VCR to either store information or download it on police service request.

Such high quality video evidence does not only assist with any prosecution cases, but also helps when it comes to exonerating and quantifying the conduct of club stewards when dealing with security and Health and Safety-related incidents. This can then be used in any subsequent claim made against Ulster Rugby.

Compliance with local guidelines

Operational support of the surveillance system is geared to comply with the strict guidelines issued by the local authority, with any incident recorded being noted in an incident log and referenced to indexed video footage. n