The town of Chur, Switzerland, owns an event hall, operated by Chur Expo AG. Various events are hosted in the facility throughout the year, from local tradeshows and concerts to the traditional Oktoberfest. The facility can accommodate up to 6,500 people.
Objective
Up-to-date and accurate number of people inside the designated area at any time during events using technology that does not permit identication of individuals and protects people’s privacy. Obtaining people’s tracking data was not an objective of this installation.
Solution
ADEC Technologies’ people counter and tracker products use integrated overhead depth-sensors. The Observer One seemed the most suitable product. The entrances to be monitored are disparate and the PoE capability of the Observer One accommodated this fact. Only one entrance required two units to achieve full coverage.
Ceiling heights were between 3.5m and 4.3m, making it ideal for the Observer One. The less than a dozen units use a common database to store the count values. ADEC provides software not only to monitor the up-to-date occupancy, but also to review historic data from past events.
Feedback
The system has been running at each event since its installation in May 2014. The installation was smooth, compared with a traditional CCTV system using IP cameras.
Up-to-date occupancy has been available at any time during the past events, permitting the operator to deny access to visitors until occupancy has dropped below capacity. The average error for every 10,000 in/out events in this installation was about 80 people.
"For us, it was decisive to have a solution that allowed us to obtain the up-to-date occupancy numbers at all times," comments Marco Engel, CEO at the Expo Chur AG.
"Prior to this solution we were dependent on additional personnel to manually gather counts at each entrance. The up-to-date occupancy is crucial for law-enforcement and re-security reasons. I’ve been very pleased with the performance of the system and the support ADEC has provided so far."