Brazil. The Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady Aparecida, located in Sao Paulo, the second largest Catholic church in the world, unified its video management systems to improve the efficiency of its surveillance.
This Catholic compound, with a capacity of 30,000 people, is the largest in size after St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. For more than a decade it has used video surveillance systems to ensure the safety of parishioners and visitors. However, they were not totally efficient, since the CCTV had two different video management systems, in two separate locations, after a review of their operation they realized that the answer was the convergence of both systems in a single platform, which would allow supervision from a single command center, help security managers to be more proactive in the protection of property and assistants.
It is important to note that the total built area of the basilica is 23,000 square meters, so the building, including the temple, can accommodate around 75,000 people. This church, which is the largest on the continent of America, has various areas such as chapels, a museum, the music education center, a shopping center, a medical clinic, a support center, restaurants and parking for thousands of buses and cars that arrive every day. Additionally, in this space special events of great attendance are held, such as pilgrimage festivals, visits by the Pope and other high-level dignitaries. That is why the cathedral has 200 agents, who reinforce security, added to the military police, according to the occasion.
In a sanctuary of this magnitude it is vitally important to maintain safety at all times. The answer to the requirements came from the hand of SilliS Security Intelligence, technology integrator and partner in the gold category of Axis, who was responsible for unifying the existing systems in a robust video management system (VMS), the XProtect software of Milestone Systems, in the data control center of the sanctuary.
Advantages of the solution
To improve the workflows and response of security agents, SilliS installed AXIS Optimizer that allows you to control the functions and settings of the cameras directly from the control panel. In addition, to provide support in the online programming of the sanctuary and the live transmission of its services, axis Streaming Assistant was installed, which allows Axis cameras, with HDTV quality, to function as transmission cameras, an added value that came into special use since the pandemic, when the internet transmission of the masses began.
According to the needs of the enclosure, a system of about 400 Axis video cameras was designed and deployed throughout the property, as well as the adaptation in the command center of a videowall with six screens, in charge of offering security personnel real-time access to all the cameras of the basilica. Similarly, a secondary command center was included within the Rainha Hotel, in the shopping complex, which has full-time staff (24/7) to provide the area with additional surveillance capacity.
Luisa Viera, IT director of the Basilica of Our Lady Aparecida, mentioned regarding the improvements that changing the video management system allowed them to concentrate the supervision of the entire complex in one place. He also stressed that now the security team can manage all Axis cameras remotely from the Milestone control panel, perform tasks such as autofocus, activation of surveillance routes and even access the metadata of the images for the intelligent search of people, objects and events of interest.
Similarly, the Basilica has developed an improvement in access control in the facilities and now relies more on cameras to monitor health safety protocols, such as temperature taking, use of masks and healthy distance.
