When Royal Caribbean International's newest cruise ship, Allure of the Seas, begins its inaugural season on December 5, the more than 6,300 passengers, 16 decks and nearly 2,100 crew members from 65 countries will be guarded by an advanced surveillance system designed for the two largest and most technologically sophisticated cruise ships in the world. Unlike narrow-field-of-view fixed cameras, the panoramic-view cameras deliver total situational awareness over a wide area with a retrospective analysis capability, which during playback allows security personnel to pan, tilt and zoom around a 360 field of view with as much control over the scene as during live viewing. It provides invaluable assistance to security personnel in resolving incidents, such as helping to identify a noise in the engine room, responding to passenger medical emergencies and determining liability issues, for just a few examples. With the right information, they can appropriately react. Among the security cameras in the robust Allure of the Seas surveillance network, there are more than 300 Oncam IP 360 5-megapixel cameras, many situated in public areas of the ship with multiple entrances, enabling simultaneous monitoring of all those entrances.
With just a single Oncam IP 360 camera in the ceiling of a hallway with elevators on opposite sides, all traffic is captured in the hallway, in and out of both elevators and to and from the adjacent stairway. This installation replaced four traditional CCTV cameras.
The cameras' retrospective feature has enabled surveillance teams to investigate and document questionable shipboard incidents from multiple angles. With the Oncam 360 cameras, in the event of an incident, security personnel can more reliably get to the bottom of it.