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Renowned for setting the latest gardening trends, the show features the newest and most desirable gardening products, and creates an explosion of color and scent in its central London location and long-term home, the Royal Hospital in Chelsea.

Over 600 exhibitors attended this year’s show, which included show gardens, small gardens, courtyard and urban gardens, over 100 floral exhibitors, and 300 garden products exhibitors.  International exhibitors attend the prestigious show from countries worldwide, and as far a field as Sweden, Barbados, Sri Lanka, France, Holland, Germany, Jamaica, South Africa, Trinidad & Tobago and Zimbabwe.

Due to the show’s worldwide popularity, visitor numbers have been capped since 1988, to a total of 157,000 -- evenly allocated throughout the exhibition week, with their own dated and allotted time slots.  With so much to see at the show, this process helps to ensure that there are no overcrowding issues, making it a pleasant and relaxing experience for all visitors.

Handling such a large amount of visitors to the central London-based temporary event, security is a top priority for show management.  Addressing this, a temporary NVT-based hybrid CCTV transmission system and control room forms the foundation of a comprehensive security effort, as Don Wetherall, Managing Director of installer, Special Events explains, “Gaining an effective overview of the show from the central command room is imperative for the effective organization of the show.  It is also important that any security measures blend into the background of the event, in order not to impact on visitor’s enjoyment of the gardens and displays.  This is especially true with the temporary surveillance system, and we take great care to provide a system that blends into the background of the show, whilst allowing the ultimate in quality monitoring performance and site coverage.

“Using NVT hybrid video transmission technology is critical to this objective, as its flexibility and ease of use means we don’t have to compromise on camera positioning, so we have maximum flexibility and choice to provide the ultimate scene coverage from each camera.  Having said this, we work within a very limited installation set-up time.  Pulling a traditional coax cable network would take weeks and cause a large amount of disruption to the other facilities being set up at the show, with the NVT hybrid UTP solution, a comprehensive Cat5e network can be set up in a fraction of the time.”

Cameras are positioned at critical points throughout the site, and are based on Special Event’s many years of providing temporary surveillance systems security, Don Continues, “We continually refine the system year-on-year, but always have to look afresh at the camera layout, as each year the show and its design can be considerably different from the previous.  The very nature of a garden show means there can be lots of tree or fence lines to block camera views, that last year, may have been completely unobstructed.  So the flexibility that using NVT UTP transmission gives us is invaluable.”

NVT NV-214A-M video transceivers are mounted to the video output of each of the cameras employed around the Chelsea site.  Provided with a mini-coax pigtail lead, the NV–214A–M allows quick mounting onto the 17 fixed cameras and allows easy in-camera mounting into the 21 dome cameras deployed.  This provides an up-the-coax type telemetry data signal, transmitted over the temporary Cat5e UTP network, to active NV-3272 DigitalEQ^TM and NV-1662 receiver hubs located in the control room and its associated equipment room.

Utilizing this technology, Special Events were able to achieve camera distances of up to 1,000 meters from the control room, relaying crystal clear images from the far side of the event to the command positions in the Control Centre.  Built specially for the event, it is here the high quality signals from all cameras are recorded on multiple DVRs.

Police, security, medical staff and show management rely on the high quality images to gain an overall view of the site from a number of perspectives, as Phil North, Technical Support and Operations Officer at the show explains, “The Control Centre is where the crystal clear NVT image quality really pays off.  Police commanders and security managers use the images to provide overall and detailed information on crowd control and for specific security issues, such as unattended baggage, or suspicious individuals in the crowd.  Show management are looking to monitor footfall and people flow around the event, making sure the ‘allotted time-slot’ ticketing system is working to plan, and crowd movement is fluid throughout the site.  The medical team is constantly in demand, attending anything from minor injuries, like cuts and bruises, to more rare and serious incidents such as heat related fainting or even cardiac episodes.  From the Control Centre we can instantly provide detailed pictures of the location of any casualties, and even an overview of the area and nature of the injury.  This helps the medical staff dispatch the correct level of assistance.”

Cameras able to view the perimeter of the show are also used to identify potential ticket touts operating in the area.  With demand so high for the limited quantity of tickets, touts have in the past, aimed to make money buying and selling entrance passes around the main entrance and exits of the show.  Event management are now keen to avoid this situation, and use the powerful surveillance technology to spot these individuals, dispatching security staff or police to move them on.  Phil North explains, “From a tout’s point-of-view, it can be relatively easy to avoid the florescent security jackets of roving patrols but they are unable to detect that they are being tracked on the CCTV system.  Once we have the clear NVT delivered pictures on our system, and can identify them and there location, it’s much easier to direct officials to deal with them effectively.”

Special Events have been supplying an effective, temporary surveillance solution at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show for nine years, utilizing NVT hybrid transmission technology at each event to provide an effective CCTV camera video transmission network under challenges specific to this site.  Don Wetherall concludes, “We are proud of our association with such a high profile event, and consider NVT, one of our key technical partners in making this, and the other temporary event installations, a qualified success.”