Detroit uses MotoMesh system for Super Bowl
Detroit police monitored activity at Ford Field during last week’s Super Bowl via an event-management solution featuring a Motorola MotoMesh 4.9 GHz network at the site, Motorola announced this week.
Real-time video from mesh-enabled cameras—part of Motorola’s Intelligent Video Surveillance and Control solution—deployed in key areas around the Super Bowl venue was transmitted to three mobile command posts and police officers securing the perimeter of the site. Security personnel viewed the video on ruggedized Motorola ML 900 laptop computers, which also could access criminal databases and deliver multimedia e-mail over the MotoMesh network, according to Motorola.
“With the stadium being in the heart of downtown Detroit, and not surrounded by parking lots like many other stadiums, we needed a solution that would boost officials’ situational awareness at the entrances and exits to the grounds,” City of Detroit Chief Information Officer Derrick Miller said in a prepared statement. “This solution allowed the officers to monitor a large area and population from their laptops while remaining in their dispatched areas.”
Rick Rotondo, director of marketing for Motorola’s mesh networks product group, said the MotoMesh solution was deployed in just a week. The city of Detroit did not pay to use the system during the Super Bowl, but it has the option of buying it in the future.
“This is the first time we’ve done strategic event management for an event like the Super Bowl,” Rotondo said. “We thought it was a good opportunity to see what MotoMesh could do on a moment’s notice … and it performed extremely well.”
MotoMesh nodes include four radios—two operating at 2.4 GHz and two operating in the 4.9 GHz band dedicated to public safety. Detroit only used the mesh-enabled 4.9 GHz radios for the Super Bowl, but Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said it is easy to envision using the infrastructure for other purposes.
“The MotoMesh network was the only solution that allowed us to leverage the interference free 4.9GHz public safety band and provide enough bandwidth to support the high quality mobile video surveillance that we needed,” Kilpatrick said in a prepared statement. “It is also exciting to know that, with MotoMesh, there is the potential to expand this network citywide in the future and address the needs of multiple agencies, as well as our citizens.”