Russ Simons, Doug Weis, Algen Williams, Mark Herrera and Tom Tingle pose at the 2016 IAVM Conference. (VT Photo)
REPORTING FROM MINNEAPOLIS — “It’s a pretty sobering time that we’re living in,” said Russ Simons, chief listening officer and managing partner at Venue Solutions Group. In a time when household items and vehicles are proving to be devastatingly successful, Simons warned that “the comfort of yesterday is no longer available to us.”
There is, however, no shortage of options to mitigate threats to venues. Simons was joined by Algen Williams, vice president and regional leader of Sport + Recreation + Entertainment at HOK, and Doug Weis, director of technology at Henderson Engineers, at the 2016 International Association of Venue Managers' VenueConnect for a panel on “Safety and Security - Crime Prevention through Environmental Design” July 24 at the Minneapolis Convention Center here. Tom Tingle, national director and senior vice president at Skanska's Sports Center of Excellence, moderated the panel.
Williams began by examining pre-9/11 arenas, where the ease of access for attendees was top priority. At the time, soft barriers were put in place between stadiums and the parking lots surrounding them. After 2001, the response to harden targets came swiftly. The goal, according to Williams, was to “create the secure perimeter and push it out as far as possible, which was the correct response, but resulted in the look of this hard target, prison-style feel as patrons approach the stadium.”
Williams shared a variety of ways in which venues can create an environment that is both secure and inviting for patrons. Trees, natural berms, slabs of stone and stairs can be introduced to prevent vehicle intrusions. Larger artistic elements can also be designed like sports logos to “include in them the theme and pageantry of the arrival experience.” Williams said this can all be done to create “that environment people want to be in and around.”
Simons added that the pools around the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, New Orleans, and Georgia Dome, Atlanta, are elements that are both aesthetically pleasing and effective vehicle intrusion blocks. He shared that the Department of State has set procedures and rules which venues commonly borrow for mitigating threats like vehicles being used as weapons. Barriers against vehicles used to be ranked along a K rating, in which the barrier is rated for how well it can keep a standard 15,000-pound vehicle traveling at varying speeds from going no further than 36 inches through it. The standard was changed in 2011 to the American Society for Testing and Materials’ M ranking, in which, for example, a vehicle traveling at 50 miles per hour would be stopped by an M50-ranked barrier.
The importance of understanding the science is twofold, according to Simons. The truck used in the recent, deadly festival attack in Nice, France, was 18,000 pounds, equivalent to the largest truck a person can rent without a specialized license.
“I’m not trying to mitigate from some sophisticated “Bourne Identity”-type of threat, we’re trying to mitigate household items,” Simons said. “This is a brave new world, and I don’t know that any of us are comfortable being in it, quite frankly. But we can’t hide from it.”
Bringing awareness to whatever discomfort that comes from these realities, Simons said, will only help. “If you understand the science, then you are less likely to get involved in the emotion."
Weis shared his insights into the technological means for mitigating threats. Weis said that maps overlaid on video feeds will give intrusion alerts where they are designed to watch for them. Drag-and-drop outlines used on surveillance software can watch for where suspicious activity is taking place, like a bag left behind or someone leaving a car in an alley where they are not supposed to be.
Facial recognition programs and fingerprint scanners are also useful for implementing access lists, Weis said, as well as deny lists. With the right databanks behind them, operators can see an attendee’s background when they are scanned in, and even cross-reference them against records of convicted criminals. He also shared that in the interest of bandwidth constrictions, 15-20 frames per second was fine for observation, forensic discovery and recognition purposes.
In an unfortunate sign of the times, Weis said that shooter detection has become another application useful for venues. For indoor uses, microphones can use acoustics to triangulate where the origin of a shot came from by how quickly the sound reached them. This information is then overlaid with building plans. Outdoor incidents utilize infrared filters, which are sensitive enough to even suggest the caliber of the weapon being used, height from which it was shot, as well as where it is on a map.
Simons praised the technology at work, since it can supersede the invaluable time it takes for a human being to understand that something is wrong and act on it. After the FBI released an in-depth analysis of active shooter events, attacks were found to last a mere three minutes on average, while first responders take longer than three minutes to arrive, meaning the time for action has usually already passed.
The technology Weis described, however, knows exactly what the threat is and can move first responders in real time. “What it does is eliminate an operator with a wand who might be tired; it eliminates human error,” Simons said. “These kinds of technologies actually have an opportunity to make a significant and real time difference to us in terms of our overall safety.”
In the end, Weis said that the technology is a tool in the hands of the people behind the scenes. “Security technology systems ideally are in support of efforts by staff and by the operator, they are not a total solution,” said Weis. “We are reliant on our operations team and how the building is operating.”
Even with all of the technology at a venue operator’s disposal, Simons said that complacency is, in his eyes, worse than any outside threat. When he has seen people put two to three times as much energy into resisting change as they could have put into implementing new practices and designs, the result “creates risks and vulnerabilities for us, which are opportunities for our opponents.”
Simons said that these opportunities are best acted on, since people have become nervous about being in large crowds as of late. “If they don’t see obvious and visible effort on your part to reinforce that they are safe while they are in your care, they’re going to be uncomfortable,” Simons said. “If they’re not comfortable they are going to make decisions that are not in your favor in terms of their willingness to come to your facilities and enjoy the activities that you have.”
Speaking on the panel: Russ Simons, (816) 352-6494; Tom Tingle, (917) 438-4500; Doug Weis (913) 742-5000; Algen Williams, (310) 838-9555