Videowall Equipment for Police of Lugano

Lugano is situated in the very south of Switzerland idyllically at the shore of the lake that owes his name to the city. As with everything else, people in Switzerland place great importance on smooth perfection. For this reason the "Polizia Città di Lugano" has integrated numerous different information, process and alarm systems into a functional unit. In this process a secure and ergonomically exemplary solution was created which is easy to handle and future-proof. Like with many other projects Wey as the integrator is relying on Eyevis large scale video technology.

Over the years the technological equipment of the old operations center became more and more complex through many new requirements without having a suitable integration concept to simplify and standardize the handling. Operative process changes and numerous new tasks additionally lead to an increase of the number of operators in the center.

The latest example of this trend is the project of the new tunnel Vedeggio-Cassarate which forced the city of Lugano to redesign their road and traffic light control system. In addition 118 emergency calls recently have to be received and processed for the whole canton. To face those tasks, conditions and the control concept as well as the ergonomic situation of the operations center appeared to be more and more overstrained - a solution had to be found. Lugano City Police in the framework of an advertisement decided to go with the "Wey-Distribution-Platform", since it meets the requirements of the advertising criteria for the new operations center with its comprehensive integration concept.

Now the operators have seven workstations with up to six monitors available that can each be controlled with a single multifunctional keyboard. All integrated systems as well as large scale image displays are conveniently controllable from any workstation. Thanks to Wey-Event-Management-Systems all results (alarms, system reports, failures etc.) are automatically displayed at the workstation and/or on a large-scale video display.

Also new: all computers of the integrated systems are now placed in a central, air conditioned system room and the computer signal distribution of video, keyboard, mouse and audio is handled by the "Wey-Distribution-Platform". Due to that, noise and heat emissions in the operations center are reduced, ergonomics at the work stations are increased, maintenance is facilitated and CO2 emissions are reduced considerably.

The Large-scale Video Screen
For the large-scale screen six Wuxga-LED rear projection Cubes in 56" (2×3 configuration) were put into operation. With this the video screen provides an almost bezel-free total image area of 3.63 × 1.51 m. Currently the screen is used to display the 47 available video cameras. In the near future 200 more video cameras are supposed to be added for the surveillance of pedestrian zones and parking lots (Project Security). Besides the video camera images computer video images from the Distribution-Platform are connected to the large-scale video screen as well.

The video screen is controlled by a high-performance Netpix graphic controller with five Eyevis-IP-Streaming-Video-Decoder-Boards. The IP-Decoder-Boards allow for the simultaneous depiction of up to 40 video streams of different origin. The management of camera and computer video sources on the large scale video screen is assumed by the eyecon wall management software. The special feature: the Wey-IP-Remote-Extenders are completely integrated into the eyecon wall management software. In this way the signals of the IP-Remote-Transmitters can already directly be used by the eyecon wall management software for controlling and depiction of the large scale video screen. A network of redundant versions of the large scale video wall and the controllers, as well as of the Distribution-Platform-Components, ensure a high failure safety.

The complexity of the task, the technical and financial conditions as well as the tight schedule imposed a considerable challenge for all involved parties. Wey sees the outstanding project organization and the extraordinarily good communication of the city of Lugano as extremely important for the successful implementation. About the cooperation, Mr. Enos Escher, head of the IT department of Lugano City Police, says: "Wey instantaneously had the distinction of being able to integrate complex systems and still keep the simplicity and lightness of the handling that is absolutely necessary in terms of operability." He further elaborates: "The company met our needs in a competent and flexible way."