Herta Wins Acclaim for Biometric Stadium Security Project

Herta‘s deployment of facial recognition technology at an Uruguayan sports stadium last year has won the company an industry award.

Implemented in collaboration with the Uruguayan Football Association, VMS provider Wavestore, and other partners, the face-scanning system was aimed at preventing unauthorized individuals – ie. confirmed soccer hooligans – from gaining access to major stadiums in the country. It scans everyone coming into the stadiums, and flags those whose faces are matched against watch lists, allowing stadium security to intervene in order to prevent the kind of violence that can sometimes erupt during soccer matches.

Last week, at the Latin American Security Association’s ALAS Management Summit in Miami, Herta’s solution was awarded the “Best Latin American Security Project” by a panel of industry professionals.

Acknowledging the win in a statement, Herta US CTO Alex Collado-Castells, who led the project’s design, explained that it was a challenging task, with the stadium cameras having to perform against “background lighting and extremely bright scenarios” caused by strong sunlight. Nevertheless, he said Herta’s software “was able to detect and identify 99% of the subjects in the database” with zero false positives. “We are very proud of our performance and to be able to protect people and families at football matches.”

And with security based on facial recognition growing increasingly popular among police and security agencies around the world, Herta’s performance and its industry acclaim in this case could help to elevate the company’s profile in an increasingly lucrative market – especially in the wake of its strong showing in the DHS’s recent Biometric Technology Rally.

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August 3, 2018 – by Alex Perala