Paris has the Eiffel Tower, New York the Empire State Building, Sydney its Opera House, Rome the Coliseum… and London has the London Eye. An extraordinary symbol for an extraordinary city. The world’s largest cantilevered observation wheel offers a spectacular way to take in over 55 of the Capital’s most famous landmarks in just 30 minutes.
The London Eye stands on the south bank of the Thames near Westminster Bridge. During a 30-minute flight, up to 800 visitors at a time experience unrivalled views of London on a 135 metre-high revolving observation wheel.
Since its opening in 2000, an average of 3.75 million visitors have experienced London’s favourite attraction each year. Indeed, the London Eye is now proving more popular than renowned historical landmarks such as St Paul’s Cathedral (two million visitors per year) and even more popular than some internationally renowned tourist attractions. The London Eye receives more visitors annually than the Taj Mahal in India (2.4 million per year), Stonehenge in the UK (850,000 per year) and even the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt (which play host to around three million per year).
The London Eye welcomed the 30 millionth visitor on board on Thursday 5 June. This milestone is befitting of an attraction that has won 75 major awards for design, engineering, customer care and services to tourism.
Security is a priority
Since London Eye’s opening – and even during the construction phase – security measures have been extremely stringent. As you would expect, the Merlin Entertainments Group – sole owner of the London Eye and the owner of 51 attractions in 12 countries – takes its security responsibilities very seriously indeed.
It is of the utmost importance that visitors to the London Eye are safe and secure – not only during their ‘flight’ but also while they’re waiting to board. On New Year’s Eve 2008, 700,000 people headed to traditional firework locations including the London Eye, for displays organized by the Mayor of London. Therefore, a complete and extremely tight security network is in place.
Just like at an airport, all passengers that want to travel in one of the 32 capsules are thoroughly screened. Security staff keep an eye on all visitors waiting in line to board the capsule. In the on-site Control Room, trained and licenced security staff monitor the images coming in from CCTV cameras installed at multiple locations around the attraction. Numerous other security measures, not all of them visible to visitors, are also in place.
Since safety and security is the biggest priority for this high-profile attraction, the Merlin Entertainments Group wanted to further increase the measures adopted.
A safe site, night and day
“Our job is to make sure that the London Eye is an extremely safe place by day and by night”, commented Eric Dench, security manager at the London Eye. “If something unusual happens, we want to know about it immediately. Security staff guard the site continuously, with the Control Room operatives looking at and assessing the images produced by numerous cameras around the perimeter. We have also installed a video analytics system.”
Dench continued: “The London Eye is a technically challenging environment in which to operate an effective security system. It is a revolving structure, located over a tidal river with large amounts of reflective glass. The requirement to be able to monitor security sensitive areas continuously while keeping the London Eye open for business compounds these issues. If you are underneath the wheel, the likelihood is that you are a tourist or legitimate operative, but if anyone attempts to access the structure without authorisation, the security staff need to be alerted immediately.”
Thermal imaging tightens the security network
“Although not always visible to the public, security measures have always been extremely tight. We are however constantly looking at new and better ways to make our security network even tighter than it is”, commented Dench. “A new tool for us at the London Eye is thermal imaging cameras.”
Thermal imaging cameras create a clear image in the darkest of nights. They need no light whatsoever to operate. They not only operate during the night but they are also well suited for daytime use. Since they can see through light fog and rain, smoke and many other obscurants they allow us to continuously monitor the site, regardless of changing environmental conditions.
The core of the thermal imaging cameras that are installed at the London Eye are FLIR Systems Photons. Equipped with a 320 x 240 pixels Vanadium Oxide detector, they produce a crisp thermal image on which the smallest of details can be seen. Furthermore, since they contain an uncooled detector they are maintenance free which is a main advantage when they are installed in hard-to-reach areas.
Thermal imaging and video analytics: working together
he images produced by the thermal imaging cameras are not only being watched by security staff. In order to eliminate human errors, they are also combined with video analytics. Reliable intrusion detection is based on the ability of a system to discriminate between background activity and unusual events that require investigation by security officers. The software installed by Ipsotec – combined with the thermal images delivered by the FLIR Systems – do this job.