Adventure Island, Southend-on-Sea’s famous seafront fun park, has invested in an IP network video surveillance system sourced from Hanwha Techwin Europe.

Adventure Island is a nine acre free entry fun park, offering more than 40 rides and attractions for all the family, plus a number of restaurants. It has been listed on Trip Advisor as No. 3 in the UK’s top attractions for 2015 as well as 11th in Europe. Adventure Island was also voted the 4th friendliest park in the world at the 2015 Amusement Today’s annual Golden Ticket Awards.

Health & Safety

Adventure Island mission statement is to provide high quality entertainment for all the family within a safe and secure environment. Greg Allen, Systems Administrator for the Stockvale Group of Companies which owns and operates Adventure Island (as well as the Sea-Life Adventure Aquarium, and a number of radio stations) says “Strict compliance with our Health & Safety policies is always at the top of the list of our priorities.”

Initially employed as a ride operator, Greg has performed a number of varied roles during the twelve years that he has worked at Adventure Island. Greg therefore knows more than most about the challenges facing a fun park which is free to enter. “We are proud of our safety record and are determined to maintain it,” said Greg. “With this in mind, the decision was made to invest in the latest video surveillance technology in order to ensure that we could monitor in real-time the movement of people throughout the park and in particular, keep a very close eye on what is happening at each of the rides.

“Our old analogue CCTV cameras were still operational, but in order to capture the best possible images, we realised that we needed to install high definition cameras which could offer higher frame rates and image quality.”

Southend-on-Sea based Blake Fire & Security, which has been maintaining Adventure Island’s fire and intruder systems as well as the analogue CCTV systems for a number of years, were invited to submit system design proposals for the new video surveillance system.

A birds-eye view

“When carrying out a detailed survey of the site, we took into consideration our client’s operational and security requirements,” said Richard Crane, CCTV Manager for Blake Fire & Security. “We concluded that by utilising Full HD 360 degree technology in certain locations, we could limit the total number of cameras required, to 40. We considered a number of manufacturers that offer 360 degree cameras but in terms of price and performance we decided to recommend that they be sourced from Hanwha Techwin Europe, along with the other required cameras and recording device.”

Ten SNF-8010 WiseNetIII 5 megapixel 360-degree cameras have been deployed at Adventure Island with most installed immediately above some of the more thrill seeking rides. The IK10/IP66 rated vandal resistant, weatherproof SNF-8010 has a digital PTZ feature which allows users to electronically pan, tilt and zoom in on specific areas for a more detailed view, whilst at the same time continue to monitor the whole 360-degree view.

25 WiseNetIII SND-5084 1.3 megapixel Day/Night domes and five WiseNetIII SNO-6084R Bullet cameras equipped with IR illuminators have also been installed at Adventure Island, with images captured by all forty cameras recorded onto a 64 channel Samsung SRN-4000 NVR.

Multi Benefits

“Hanwha Techwin Europe and Blake Fire & Security have worked well together to provide us with a high performance solution that we are able to benefit from in many different ways,” said Greg Allen. “In terms of Health & Safety, we are able to use the recorded video as a training aide. We are also using both the live and recorded images for loss prevention purposes and to detect any anti-social behaviour.”

“Bearing in mind the size of the site and the number of cameras required to ensure that there are no blind spots, we installed a dedicated fibre network to support the cameras. This has allowed us to take full advantage of the superb quality images captured by the WiseNetIII cameras, some of which are located up to 100 metres from our control room. We are able to simultaneously view live and recorded images at full frame rates without any latency or loss of image quality.”

Future Opportunities

In the future Adventure Island is intending to trial a people counting application that can be run on the open platform WiseNetIII cameras in order to gain a greater understanding of people that visit the park.