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Bosch technology for soccer stadium

At the Itaipava Arena Fonte Nova stadium in Brazil, 500 loudspeakers and a technical command centre supplied by Bosch ensure that the sound is always right, no matter what the situation.

In stadiums, the systems must ensure the uniform control of loudspeakers and amplifiers and usually have to be capable of bridging long distances without a loss in quality during audio transmission. To achieve this, the individual amplifiers in the Itaipava Arena Fonte Nova are directly connected to the loudspeakers on the roof of the stadium. But they do not need any free-climbing acrobats to check and maintain the systems, because the sound technicians can monitor everything and ensure optimum sound quality from their control room.

From the security control room, operators can zoom in on a particular seat when an event occurs, such as someone needing a doctor. This helps the paramedics figure out where they need to go quickly. The arena is home to the top-league club Bahia, which means it was designed to handle large-scale events. There was an old stadium located on the same spot, but it was torn down in 2008.

“Here in the newly-built arena, we've installed 280 cameras, 500 loudspeakers, and 4000 fire alarms,” says Rodrigo Alexsandre Elias, the head engineer, detailing the safety systems. “We can evacuate the 50 000-seat stadium within just eight minutes.”

The sports facility has been using technology from the Bosch Security Systems division ever since its inauguration in March 2013. “The Bosch systems worked perfectly from day one. And they’re highly compatible with the other equipment in the stadium,” Elias says.

The venue also features Bosch thermotechnology in the form of 21 solar thermal collectors and two heat pumps. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” his colleague Ailtonde Jesus Perqueira adds. “We can get pictures of isolated events both live and with a time delay. A number of hooligans looking to vent their aggression on the new stadium have since found this out to their cost.”

During the games, security staff also sit in the control room, ready to direct their colleagues straight to the troublemakers. The new technology has even given the security experts in the control room a psychological trick they can use to quell a brawl: “We capture what’s happening on camera and project the situation onto the big screens in the stadium,” Perqueira explains. “That way, everyone can see who is getting into a fight. That often embarrasses the people involved so badly that it stops them in their tracks.”

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