Latin America’s largest videowall helps keep the City of Queretaro safe

To maintain its reputation of safest city in Mexico, Querétaro City recently invested in a new C4 control center. Equipped with Barco UniSee video wall platform and networked visualization solutions to monitor the city’s security cameras, Querétaro is ready to quickly respond to any crisis.

Deep in the heart of the cultural and historically rich area of Central Mexico is the city of Santiago de Querétaro, known simply as Querétaro City. The city’s beautiful, well-preserved historic center, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is also home to restaurants, cafés, markets, and shops.

Keeping the city safe

Querétaro has long been considered one of the safest cities in the country. Although the crime rate is still quite low, it has been on the rise over the past three years.

Taking a proactive approach, city leaders committed more than 365 million Dollar Pesos for new infrastructure, equipment, and technology required to ensure the well-being of its residents. This investment included 1,000 video surveillance cameras, 200 citizen alert buttons placed at points such as schools, gardens, and squares, and 100 License Plate Recognition cameras in the city. It also included an 8.500-square-meter building to house a new C4 (Command, Control, Communication and Computing) Center, that would include a real-time monitoring system for all of Querétaro’s video surveillance.

The ambitious plan was to monitor the feeds from more than 2,350 surveillance cameras throughout the city, 24/7. To do that, they needed an enormous video wall in the main Surveillance Room, as well as two smaller walls in a Crisis Room and a Meeting Room. They also wanted a high-quality of video display and the ability to communicate between the various video walls.

Querétaro required visualization technology that could maintain its quality when operated around the clock. That’s why they selected Barco’s UniSee LCD video wall. UniSee 500 tiles have a lifespan of 100,000 hours in 24/7 mode, which is higher than many other products in the market. 

Thanks to its NoGap technology, Barco UniSee is virtually seamless. This enables Querétaro operators to monitor their critical information in real time, without the distracting seams and without any information loss.

A total of three video walls were installed in their C4 Center: a crisis room with a 3x2 Barco UniSee LCD video wall, a meeting room with a 2x2 Barco UniSee LCD video wall and a main surveillance room with a 28x3 Barco UniSee LCD video wall. The main video wall is more than 100 feet wide, which is slightly bigger than a seven-story building laid on its side. As such, it’s the largest monitoring video wall of its kind in Latin America.

View better, share faster, resolve quicker

Querétaro operators need to make fast decisions based on the information they receive. The C4 center’s visualization platform therefore needed to make it easier for them to collaborate better and view surveillance camera video feeds on any video wall across the facility. Operators also needed to be able to share content between the different rooms and video walls. Barco’s networked visualization solutions made this possible.

Camera feeds are monitored with a Milestone video management system, and seamlessly integrated with Barco’s TransForm N management suite. Thanks to this integration, operators can monitor their video content exactly where they need it and share it securely across the organization, from the main control room to the crisis room and meeting room, or with remote stakeholders. It is the first time this has been implemented in Mexico.

Increased responsiveness

Querétaro’s new C4 Center consolidates all the city’s security and intelligence infrastructure for surveillance analysis and responsiveness. As a trusted technology partner, Barco was able to exceed the city’s expectations in terms of quality, experience, and collaboration with other technology partners.

Thanks to the video wall’s outstanding visuals, seamless viewing experience, and networked visualization, Querétaro city has a powerful tool that increases responsiveness during any crisis. This way, the authorities can mitigate threats as quickly as possible and guarantee peace of mind for its citizens and visitors.