Study: Beijing To Invest More Than $720 Million For 2008 Summer Olympic Games Security
The Security Industry Association (SIA) recently released its “China Olympic Security Update”, a comprehensive analysis of China’s investment in security products and services for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Created in collaboration with SINOTRUST, the report examines the myriad security challenges and the technologies Olympic Update highlights include:
- Total investment for the Beijing Olympic is 280 billion RMB (U.S. $36.3 billion). Investors include the central government, local governments of host cities, Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the 29th Olympiad and social groups.
- Based on the security investment for the Athens and Sydney Olympic Games, Beijing expects to invest 2,316 million RMB (U.S. $300 million) for the security of the Olympic venues. In terms of purchasing power parity, it’s equivalent to U.S. $720 million.
- State of the art RFID technology, used in many of the SP systems for the Games, will be integrated with building intelligence systems for seamless interoperability. Signals from security devices, such as electronic ticketing systems, will be transmitted to monitoring centers where ticket-holders whereabouts are tracked. Meanwhile, extensive video monitoring systems will be relied upon heavily to capture and record any breach in security.
- According to data from the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, the Olympic Security Protection investment totals 2,316-3,088 million RMB (U.S. $300-400 million), covering the cost of personnel protection, physical protection, and technical protection.
- The five major security systems are the video monitoring system, the burglar-alarm system, the access control system, the electronic ticketing system, and the security detection system, totaling an investment of about 889 million RMB (U.S. $115 million).
- Investment in video monitoring systems is 220 million RMB (U.S. $28.5 million). The video monitoring systems ranked first, accounting for 33 percent of the total. The reason for this is that a large number of spy/CCTV cameras are installed in and around the venues.
- Olympic sponsors that provide security protection products include GE, Honeywell, Panasonic, Pelco and Siemens.
- Between 2001 and 2008, the security investment in the Grand Beijing Safeguard Sphere is estimated at 50 billion RMB (U.S. $6.5 billion), predominantly for construction of the Beijing video monitoring system. Chief investors are social forces and organizations, such as financial organizations, universities, large-scale shopping malls, hotels, internal enterprises, and residential communities.