Video Security for Fourteen English Premier League Clubs

Like many national football leagues, the teams of the English Premier League also suffer from unacceptable incidents such as people lighting pyrotechnics and throwing projectiles, hate crime and vandalism. This is why as early as 2013 the managers at Everton F.C. opted for a patented video security solution from the ­German video technology company Dallmeier.
Today, fourteen out of twenty clubs in the 2019/2020 Premier League season have implemented Dallmeier ‘Panomera’ multifocal sensor systems – including Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United. Many teams in the top flight of English football are also involved in the Champions League and Europa League, so it is also extremely important for them to satisfy the safety regulations imposed internationally by UEFA and similar bodies.
For this purpose, Dallmeier’s solutions enable high-resolution capture of expansive areas, such as the stands, with a minimum number of camera systems. With Panomera cameras, multiple operators have the capability to zoom in on suspicious activities independently of one another, while the system continues to record the entire scene. An optimum overview of the situation is obtained with this combination of the advantages of PTZ and megapixel cameras, which can also be searched at the required minimum resolution at any time later. This enables the clubs to achieve continuity of video evidence, get instant identification of people and events, and so to reduce potential penalty payments.

Smart Content Analysis
Besides ensuring the usability of video recordings in court, the ‘minimum resolution density’ is also important for video analysis applications. As stated so succinctly by the rule ‘quality in, quality out’, the quality of the results of analysis can of course only ever be as good as the quality of the image, and accordingly the quality of the input data. This is particularly true, for example, in crowd analyses for counting people in stands, for hostile vehicle mitigation or to detect intrusion in sterile areas.
With Dallmeier solutions, customers can precisely specify their required pixel density values defined according to DIN EN 62676-4 for each region of the area to be captured as early as the planning stage –for example, whether at least 62.5 px/m are required for AI-based object classification, or 125 or even 250 px/m are required to guarantee that recordings of persons will be usable in court.
“Throughout our selection procedure, the Panomera cameras from Dallmeier were able to deliver images of the highest quality time after time, not only in normal daylight conditions, but also under weaker floodlighting, that is to say, not only live but also in the recording with the highest resolution quality in all regions of the images. The Panomera cameras also capture the entire area of the stands with just a small number of systems. Ultimately, these considerations were the critical factor in our decision to award Dallmeier the contract for video security at Goodison Park”, says David Lewis, Head of Security and Stadium Safety for Everton F.C.

3D Planning Approach
The innovative 3D planning approach by Dallmeier provides stadium operators with the ability to place each individual camera with the highest precision in advance by using a ‘digital twin’. So the planning even contributes to a reduction of total costs. At the same time, the in-house planning team manages any potential difficulties such as visual obstacles (e.g. a video cube) or subsequent structural changes. This ensures that there are no ‘cost traps’ for the customers, and that compliance with all the requirements is guaranteed when the system is actually implemented.