Axiomatic provided the organisers of the Commonwealth Games 2022 with a live footfall solution
Background
In July and August of 2022, Birmingham hosted the 22nd Commonwealth Games, the largest multisport event to be held in England in 10 years, featuring thousands of world class athletes and over 1.5 million spectators.
As part of the event, Live Sites formed a core cultural offer at the Games and provided an opportunity to make the Games accessible to all.
They typically comprised free to enter locations with a defined perimeter, screen provision to watch the games, designated spaces for ‘have-a-go’ areas, food, participation and entertainment elements.
The Games organisers approached Axiomatic as they were in need of an occupancy system to understand and manually control the occupancy vs. the capacity of the Live Site. During the consultative stage, the following factors were discussed:
The first access point was made up of 12 ‘tents’ measuring 5m in width with a peaked roof measuring 5m. The sensors had a maximum mounting height of 4.5m so consideration was needed as to how to lower the counters to a suitable mounting height.
The other access points were through open gates so overhead gantries needed to be constructed.
Following detailed conversations about the environment, Axiomatic provided specialist housings for the counters to protect them from the elements.
We also constructed brackets to suspend the counters from the overhead gantry which brought them down to the required mounting height.
We recommended the Irisys Vector 4D time of flight counter as it offered highly accurate and reliable performance and lent itself very well to crowded areas and occupancy monitoring.
The counters were to be mounted overhead and monitored visitors walking back and forth below. They were powered by a single cat5 cable which connected them to the PeopleCounter service.
The brackets were also designed to reduce any swaying of the counters. We also needed to consider factors such as the free-flowing foot traffic, activities inside the tents and the positioning of staff and their movements.
Inside the tents, the counters were mounted to brackets attached to the internal structure, allowing them to be positioned in the optimum location for tracking visitors.
We provided a live occupancy report as well as hostorical footfall reports for the period of the Games and these were accessible from the control room.
Axio supported the system throughout the course of the games providing remote support, break-fix spares, and attendance within 4 hours of any critical failures
