Seville celebrates a safer Easter thanks to Bosch cameras

Within its Smart City project, The Seville City Council is using Bosch camera video analytics during Holy Week. Its smart sensors allow real-time information to be collected about the flow of people, as well as detecting fast-moving objects or heavy vehicles in pedestrian areas.

Holy Week in Seville attracts thousands of visitors to the historic center of the city, as the brotherhoods make their penance from their temple to the Cathedral. This concentration of people, combined with the city's architecture in this area (narrow streets with corners), and the terrorist threat, han generado en la población una sensación de miedo que la hace más vulnerable a falsas alarmas generadas por la caída de elementos metálicos, screams or running of groups of people, which on many occasions have been deliberate.

This has caused situations of collective panic in recent years that have resulted in stampedes and people being crushed, ruptura de la procesión, abandono de imágenes y numerosos daños materiales, in addition to creating a negative image of this event, which is a tourist attraction for the city.

Es por esto que el Ayuntamiento de Sevilla ha decidido utilizar herramientas que le permita conocer, in real time, what the flows of people accessing the center are like, the level of occupancy of the different sections of the route, possible crowding on evacuation routes, the start of races or stampedes, or the detection of heavy vehicles in pedestrian areas.

To respond to these challenges, the City Council has signed an agreement with Bosch Security and Safety Systems to use the video analytics of their cameras during this Holy Week. Its smart sensors allow real-time information to be collected about the flow of people, as well as detecting fast-moving objects or heavy vehicles in pedestrian areas.

The Bosch solution was selected for its embedded video analytics in the cameras, which allows them to be connected via weak connections such as 4G and provide people counting and occupancy level detection; its Starlight technology for color vision in low light conditions; the extended dynamic range (WDR), capable of optimally managing changes in light and backlighting, both during the day, and at night; data security (TMP) implemented in cameras at the hardware level; the low data consumption and storage of video streaming; and for allowing redundant storage in the camera and in the Cecop.

As already published in Digital Security Magazine, the City Council of Seville has launched a pioneering Smart City project , of which this agreement is part, applied to Holy Week. This includes a system of dimmable lighting and mechanisms for controlling the flow of people.

In addition to Bosch, other major companies linked to innovation also participate such as Telefónica, Cisco y Ferrovial, which have developed different tools aimed at data processing and coordinated city management, especially in the face of major events.

La información de las cámaras de Bosch es recogida por la plataforma IoT de Axion, para tratar los datos de conteo y ocupación, y ofrecerlos en el protocolo adecuado a la plataforma de ciudad, en este caso implementada por Cisco, desde la que se gestiona el resto de subsistemas como el alumbrado público, la megafonía o la mensajería de emergencia.

Para conseguir la mayor efectividad en el conteo de personas, las cámaras han sido instaladas en altura con visión cenital por la empresa Protelsur, en diferentes puntos estratégicos de la ciudad, como son los accesos al centro, principales vías de evacuación y plazas públicas.

Las cámaras han sido conectadas al Cecop (Centro de coordinación de emergencias) mediante conexiones de fibra óptica y 4G (LTE) implementadas y aseguradas IP-Sec.

With this information, el visionado en directo de las cámaras y la permanente comunicación a la Policía, los responsables del Cecop pueden enviar mensajes en directo a la población a través de megafonía, redes sociales y balizas Bluetooth, actuar sobre el alumbrado público, llevándolo a máxima intensidad, o activar la intervención de la Policía.

For this reason, la finalidad última de este proyecto es la obtención de forma automática y fiable del grado de ocupación de diferentes vías del centro, pudiendo en tiempo real conocer cómo se comportan los visitantes al centro de la ciudad y poder tomar medidas preventivas para evitar situaciones de riesgo para la población. Con las estadísticas de afluencia, new actions can be planned for upcoming editions.

A shielded city to maintain security

The safety and health device promoted by the Seville City Council and the central Government for these festivities includes the mobilization of more than 2.500 personnel belonging to various security and emergency forces, as well as 143 security cameras on the roads, nine in the city center, two helicopters, a special urban cleaning plan and an increase in urban transport services, among other aspects.

The device includes, besides, con 143 traffic surveillance cameras installed on various roads on the outskirts of Seville and the accesses to the city, as well as 161 paneles informativos también en las carreteras y nueve cámaras de vigilancia instaladas en el centro de la ciudad por el Consistorio. La Dirección General de Tráfico espera unos 690.000 desplazamientos en la provincia de Sevilla, con especial incidencia en la capital.