Elevating Video Capabilities
Los Angeles Convention Center keeps an open mind about security solutions
- By Barbara Rizzatti
- December 01, 2019
The Los Angeles Convention Center attracts millions of
visitors each year and is renowned internationally as a
prime site for conventions, trade shows and exhibitions.
Located in downtown L.A., the Los Angeles
Convention Center (LACC) offers nearly one million
square feet of exhibit hall, meeting room and amenity space, hosting
350 events annually. With full-service business centers, food courts,
a 299-seat theater, 48 freight docks and on-site parking for 5,600
vehicles, the facility relies on its video security and surveillance system
for a wide range of uses.
Since opening in 1971, the LACC has since undergone modernization
and expansion, including the recent addition of more than 300
security cameras unified by open platform video management software
(VMS) from Milestone Systems. AEG Facilities, a stand-alone
division of AEG, the leading sports and live entertainment company
in the world, assumed facility management of the city-owned LACC
in December 2013.
Years of Involvement
According to John Russell, president of RD Systems, who has been
the integrator involved with the LACC for nearly 15 years, the center
has always had video. But, it came to a point where the system needed
substantial expansion and improvement. A few years ago, LACC
management approved a phased upgrade approach to the previous
analog hybrid video system, with the goals of increasing its use and
upgrading its quality and capabilities.
“The convention center has hundreds of events every year, and
there are a lot of moving parts,” Russell said. “Having high-quality
video available in key areas helps the center mitigate risk.”
With security always a prime concern, the center also relies on
video to help capture non-security-related occurrences to resolve
issues around accidents, damage to the facility or injuries.
Three primary groups within the LACC use the video system:
Security, Parking and the Food & Beverage Group. According to
Rubin Lechuga, vice president of security and guest services at LACC, the Food & Beverage Group uses video to monitor its pointof-
sale areas, all food and beverage locations and office spaces. The
parking team monitors all parking and garage areas and vehicle
entry/exit points. The security group uses, manages and maintains
the entire system.
Open for an Upgrade
After several months of detailed design and plan work, the team
began the upgrade to the new open platform VMS being deployed in
early 2018. The initial phases involved installation of a dedicated IP
network for the security and surveillance system. This included a
single-node fiber backbone and a series of Cisco switches throughout
the entire campus, followed by the first deployment of 170 network
cameras, building toward the final phase, which will include close to
400 cameras.
“We evaluated every camera location and took into consideration
the scene lighting and specific need for that camera,” said Chris Gustafson,
vice president of operations at RD Systems, and a project
manager for the convention center installation. “It would have been
easy to just drop in a repeated set of camera brands and models, but
that would have limited the system’s effectiveness. We probably have
about 20 different models in place, depending on the need, and the
open platform VMS allows this to happen.”
The system’s current mix of 365 cameras includes a variety of highdefinition
Panasonic and Hanwha Techwin cameras, including 1080P
and 720P fixed cameras, 360-degree multi-image cameras and PTZ
camera dome systems. With the open platform VMS, there is the
freedom to choose the best technologies to meet specific budget and
use requirements.
“With this upgrade, we went from having 30 standard-resolution
analog cameras covering our property to having about ten times that
many cameras — now all excellent quality and IP networked,”
Lechuga said. “We operate a staffed, live-monitored command center
24/7, and we are now able to see almost everything happening around
our 55-acre property. If we miss something, we can quickly review
recorded video. The new system is great.”
RD Systems also rebuilt the LACC’s Security Command Center,
which was showing its age. With large, tube-based, black-and-white
monitors still in place, and furniture components that dated back
some 25 years, the old command center seriously needed an upgrade.
“The LACC needed a command center that could function optimally,”
Gustafson said. “They now have a multi-function security
facility with multiple operator stations, and a supervisor station
where the LAPD can come in and see what’s happening. It is all based
on new, 55-inch high-resolution color displays that can show what
the cameras have to offer.”
Access Control Integration
The convention center’s original security system used Lenel OnGuard
for the access control, along with Lenel Prism for the video management.
As the center’s video needs continued to grow, it was essential
to maintain tight integration with the Lenel OnGuard system.
“In working with RD Systems, as well as with Lenel, they both
suggested we should look into an open platform as our new video
management,” Lechuga said. “We started looking at the XProtect
software and its tight-knit integration with OnGuard. Situational
awareness for access control is critical and we have cameras at a
handful of select doors to verify credentials with an image of who
came through the door.”
Lechuga explained the center is not only monitoring access control
points with video, but also has nearly 700 doors that are accessible
by the public, where no access control is present. The security
department needs to monitor foot traffic passing through these
many doors, as well as be able to see any abnormalities.
“If someone props open a door, we need to be able to quickly
identify where that door is and have a camera pull up, so they know
if someone’s coming in or out, if they took something or perhaps
left something inside,” Lechuga said. “We need to see if someone is
just having a cigarette or if something more malicious is happening.
We need to take action to find out why a door is open that shouldn’t
be open.”
A Smooth Transition
Because of the center’s demanding event schedule, when it came time
to deploy the new system, the center needed to keep parts of the old
system operational, as well as cover areas manually, to continue to
ensure facility safety and security. The team orchestrated which cameras
were going offline and when, so staff could be dispatched to
monitor those areas while video coverage was migrated.
“The swap over was carefully planned. We worked with an engineer
and put together a migration plan for taking the servers down,
loading new software onto the new servers, bringing cameras into the
new servers and tying them with the Lenel OnGuard system,” Gustafson
said. “It was all carefully mapped out so the center knew exactly
what they could see per camera, per day, per hour. Everything was
planned out for them so there were no surprises.”
Gustafson explained the upgrade and swap-over process went very
smoothly and ran ahead of schedule. The team was able to upgrade
the VMS and migrate all 300 plus cameras to seven new servers within
just two days.
“The transition was seamless, and because the new VMS is so
much easier to use, very little staff retraining was needed. We were
fully operational with all of the workstations updated with the client
application by the end of day two,” Lechuga said. “It was a huge task,
but RD Systems did a great job migrating and getting the system all
situated – we had no issues at all.”
Looking forward, the center wants to add site map capabilities to
the system to help operators easily follow suspects as they move from
camera to camera throughout the facility. The addition of video analytic
behaviors, such as people counting and directional flow, may
also be in the future integration plans.
“We have so many options now with the open platform VMS in
place,” Lechuga said. “We need to really look into and decide how we
want to advance our video capabilities. I look forward to seeing how
this evolves.”
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2019 issue of Campus Security Today.