Integrator Tasked With Challenging Video Surveillance Project

By Brian Albright, Field Technologies

Successfully deploying an ad hoc wireless video network helped forge a long-term relationship with a major marathon.

Setting up an outdoor situational awareness push package and surveillance system is generally pretty straightforward: You place enough cameras to cover the area you need to secure, make sure the network connectivity and power supply are solid, and turn on the monitors. But setting up a similar camera solution for a nearly 30-mile urban marathon so organizers can keep an eye on the course and spectators can watch via a jumbotron is another story altogether.

That was the task faced by VIRSIG, an integrator specializing in network performance monitoring and IP physical security solutions. The New York Road Runners (NYRR), the organization that manages the TCS New York City Marathon, was looking for a way to set up a network of cameras that would push live video back to the race command center and provide video feeds to the jumbotrons.