Add baseball’s 2017 World Series to the list of large-scale sporting events for which Haystax Technology has provided real-time event security monitoring.

This year’s Major League Baseball (MLB) championship took place from October 24 to November 1. Three of the series’ seven games between the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers were played at Houston’s Minute Maid Park (pictured), without any major disruptions to fan or team safety.

The Houston Urban Area’s public safety and security teams were supported by Haystax’s domain awareness system during the three home games. In the system, Houston used four specially-configured map layers — three during the games and one during subsequent celebrations after the Astros clinched the title.

These layers displayed the locations of officers deployed in the field, barricades and road closures, and security camera locations around Minute Maid Park, BBVA Compass Stadium, George R. Brown Convention Center, Toyota Center and the Washington Corridor. Being able to visualize event-specific information in relation to known assets on the map meant that commanders were able to make more informed context-based decisions about how to effectively deploy their resources across broad sections of the city.

A post-championship parade and rally on November 3 attracted approximately one million Astros fans, and was reportedly the largest in the city’s history. The fourth map layer displayed the route of the 20-block-long celebration parade, as well as the rally venue. Both events were monitored in the Haystax system at the Houston Police Department’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC).

In addition, computer-aided dispatch (CAD) calls and critical infrastructure information were monitored alongside World Series events, enabling the EOC to have a comprehensive picture of the area to maintain public safety. By creating dedicated channels for specific types of CAD incidents — for example, episodes of looting or calls for rescue — EOC personnel could filter out extraneous ‘noise’ from unrelated CAD calls and spot emerging patterns as to which residential or commercial districts needed the biggest first responder presence to head off such activities before they escalated. The system also allowed Houston to generate automated reports based on the CAD channel feeds, for inclusion in detailed after-action briefings.

Haystax has an extensive history of supporting events of major national security importance, such as the 2012 Republican National Convention and Pope Francis’s 2015 US visit. The company’s users also deploy the company’s system for high-profile entertainment events such as the 2014 and 2017 Academy Awards, or Oscars.

In the specialized field of sports security, Haystax Technology’s first major event was the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup Finals in 2004. Since then, Haystax has provided real-time security domain awareness for eight of the National Football League’s last nine Super Bowls — plus the Boston Marathon, Indianapolis 500, US Open, America’s Cup, NCAA Final Four and a number of National Basketball Association and MLB regular- and post-season games.

Houston was the second World Series at-bat for Haystax; its first was in San Francisco, in the 2014 matchup between the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals.

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