Music City Center is Nashville’s convention center, hosting a year-round schedule of conferences, events, and exhibitions. Occupying four city blocks across 2.1 million square feet, the organization is an anchor of the Broadway district and a significant contributor to the city’s economy.

“Everything that happens here impacts everything in downtown Nashville,” said Jim Greer, director of security, Music City Center. “We needed a security system that could take us into the future.”

The Center worked with its partner Convergint Technologies to determine the right path, starting a search that ultimately led to the deployment of a large-scale, full-featured surveillance system based on Hanwha Vision technologies.

Being located in the heart of downtown Nashville presented a number of security challenges for the Center, starting with the sheer volume of people passing through the facility each year. Its existing security system didn’t provide adequate coverage for such an expansive complex and the Center’s security team constantly struggled with retrieving recorded video easily and quickly to share internally and with law enforcement.

The long-standing collaboration between Convergint and Hanwha Vision helped the Center achieve its goal of increasing its situational awareness and strengthening its operational efficiencies, while bolstering the downtown area from an economic, safety and tourism perspective.

Greer noted the Center’s previous system was designed well in advance of the building’s construction — “it was already old before it was even installed” – plus it was less of an integrated system and more a patchwork of disparate technologies. “We had an access control system and a video management system,” he said. “Neither one of them talked to each other and that made it difficult to perform effective investigations.”

The Center has more than doubled its camera count to about 700 Hanwha Vision models, achieving effective coverage through efficient camera configurations.

“By far, the quality of the video has proven to be a game-changer for our organization. We have 360-degree coverage, not only on our exterior but also within the facility that extends beyond what most cameras systems can provide.”

– Eric Blouin, director of technology at Music City Center

“We have more than 1,600 views throughout the facility,” Greer said. “Now, our ability to take a five-head Hanwha Vision camera and put it in the place of an older, poor quality fisheye model without actually having to change much infrastructure has made a huge difference in what we see and what we can do with our systems.”

“By far, the quality of the video has proven to be a game-changer for our organization,” said Eric Blouin, director of technology at Music City Center. “We have 360-degree coverage, not only on our exterior but also within the facility that extends beyond what most cameras systems can provide.”

In addition to higher-quality video, the new cameras are supporting a range of enhanced operational capabilities, from cross-camera tracking to the use of AI analytics that detect loitering and line crossing as well as near real-time identification of persons or objects. “We’re able to lock in on a lost child and figure out where they were just 10 minutes ago to find them now,” Blouin said. “Before, it took hours to track somebody down throughout the facility. Now we’re talking minutes.”

The Center plans to continue using analytics in newer ways, for example, relying on heat mapping to analyze traffic patterns in and around the facility. “The biggest benefit is integration,” Blouin said. “We’re able to take all our technologies and blend them together.”

The new system is helping the Center’s security team take a more proactive approach to security, dispatching staff to the site of an incident in a timelier manner. When it’s necessary to involve local law enforcement, the open nature of data transmission using the Hanwha Vision cameras makes sharing footage and resolving issues with Metro Nashville Police Department easy and fast.

“Being able to quickly provide video and sit reps regarding incidents that happen in and around our facility has been paramount,” said Blouin. “Having that eye in the sky constantly monitoring everything makes the whole community safer.”

With its first phase of new camera installations now complete, the Center will continue updating its older cameras to newer Hanwha Vision models.

“We never want to get back to a situation where we’re ever playing catch up to the security of this building again,” Greer said. “When people come to Nashville, and when they come to this convention center, they’re going to be safe. It’s hard to put a tangible value on what this new system has delivered, but it’s made this building safer.”