A case study of the CCTV transmission at the 2014 New York City Marathon which runs each year through all five boroughs of New York City and is the largest marathon in the world. Security was a prime consideration after the bombing of the Boston Marathon in April 2013.
For the 2014 marathon, the organisers the New York Road Runners Club (NYRR) gave the contract to supply digital information transport services to New York based IP network and electronic security installer Virsig LLC. On the day of the marathon, a temporary system would provide operational situational awareness, digital information transport for the CCTV cameras, voice announcements, media broadcast, and digital signage, including Jumbotron large-screen televisions.
Due of the limitations of installing signal over long and costly fibre runs, Virsig opted to transport digital signals over less expensive and more flexible coax cable. Allowing long cable runs to be readily deployed across the marathon start at Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island, Virsig chose Transmission Bus (TBus) IP transmission technology from Network Video Technologies (NVT).
Working under the National Park Service, US Park Police and the US Coast Guard Police authorities, NVT single and four-channel TBus Ethernet over UTP/Coax transmitters, Sony IPELA cameras, wireless nodes and antennas were installed. The NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) worked with Virsig to keep the power supply to the poles energised at all times, to power the temporary equipment forming the 150Mbs Ethernet over Coax (EoC) transmission network.
The IP network was installed using RG59 coax with spans of over 3000ft (914m) across the open space at Fort Wadsworth, home to the US Coast Guard and US Army Reserves. Near four miles of communication cable was installed from pole to pole, and over structures, fences and between trees. In the race command centre (RCC), Virsig installed a wall of commercial grade monitors to be used as part of the primary camera viewing station. A Seneca viewing station was used to control tactical camera operations and Firetide Hotview Pro software was installed on the system to provide monitoring of the network via the marathon’s Smart Wall – which supplied up to 36 camera views at once.
TBus Ethernet over UTP/Coax transmitters and surveillance cameras were installed on city streets and within Central Park. Above the finish line on a steel Photo Bridge (where ESPN and other media were on race day), Virsig positioned cameras and wireless nodes to record the race finish and capture the crossing of the finish line by each runner. Another camera was at post-finish to observe the chokepoint – a sensitive area behind the race finish.
Early on the Sunday morning of the race, over 50,000 competitors ran across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge from Staten Island into Brooklyn, on the start of their 26.2 miles. A few hours later as large numbers of runners started to enter Central Park, the monitoring station in the RCC displayed dozens of cameras, which fed real-time data to the race staff and incident commanders – for overall situational awareness.
In Staten Island, the Jumbotrons and systems that needed information transport worked fine. The near four miles of cable Virsig strung along with Network Video Technologies’ TBus Ethernet Transmitters operated flawlessly. The race went on until after dark, while the last runners were wrapping up the course at Central Park.
Adam Roth, VP of Technology, Virsig LLC, said: “My experience with the NVT TBus technology is nothing short of spectacular. The alternative to using NVT’s TBus products would have been fibre. However, the cost and time to install fibre (including man-hours), would have been at least 3 times more. Once the NVT TBus equipment was paired, it took only minutes to connect the equipment at both ends. The performance was equal to the experience and we’ll use the NVT TBus products again in the future.”
