security
The Future of Casino Security By Andrew Coppolino
It is perhaps fitting that one of the world’s largest casino facilities—Casino Estoril in Lisbon, Portugal—was at least part of the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale and its central character James Bond. Ever since the book’s publication in 1953, casinos and “eye-in-the-sky” monitoring and sur veillance have been uniquely intertwined. Canadian Gaming Business recently consulted several industry experts in order to uncover what new technologies and surveillance modalities are coming into play, or are on the horizon. Intelligent analytic systems, says James Moore, vicepresident, iView Systems, are evolving quickly. That includes applications such as license-plate recognition and facial recognition systems and others that watch events and activities in and around the gaming establishment. But add to that how these systems are being integrated, by virtue of applications like iView’s iTrak Incident Reporting & Risk Management System that utilizes the latest software technology to facilitate rapid integration with related systems, and you are getting into some complex territory. “Traditionally, we have had disparate systems A, B, C, and D—video, access control, player tracking systems, for instance—reporting at casinos and other security properties and bringing that information together in one logical and reportable format is one of the biggest challenges.” Convergence, adds Moore, collects all the data and makes it more readily accessible for the property, both outside and inside. For iView Systems, the security approach is what might be described as a macrocosmic/microcosmic dynamic.
He refers to “layering,” starting with the external environment then moving into a secondary layer with technology such as facial recognition before focusing even more finely on a tertiary layer at the player/card level. “Increasingly, these levels permit us to track from a security or other perspective individuals coming into the property, on the property, and working with the property,” Moore said. The long arm of the weakened economy has had its reach into the industry, and iView’s systems are, and will continue to be, an answer to the circumstances, he estimates. “People are trying to do more with less and do it more covertly with the technology. There are fewer staff in the command-control environment monitoring more systems, so by integrating and converging these systems into a single desk-top environment it is easier for them to learn the system and deal with the events that occur. There’s more overlay within the systems that informs the security officer of what they should be doing.” At Honeywell Video Systems, Marek Robinson, director of sales, says their cameras are specially designed for the casino industry while their control software like MAXPRO(R) VMS system and IDM (integrated data management) ties together all the transactional systems on the property as a “data engine.” The convergence theme has a slight twist as Robinson sees it in an evolution from analog to digital systems, something that is perhaps a recurring theme in virtually any business sector, and, by extension, larger society itself. But it poses unique challenges for security and surveillance in the casino setting.
24 | October 2009
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10/23/09 1:18:00 PM