Dreamteam 2006: zenOn and the Allianz Arena

The ultra-modern Munich Allianz Arena stadium is a perfect example of how to manage and experience football events in the 21st century. In the stadium, fans experience the beautiful game in a bristling atmosphere with great comfort, supported and informed by the latest in high-tech building automation coordinated by the zenOn HMI/SCADA system.

In 2006, the Munich Allianz Arena is hosting the most significant event in the football calendar. Over 60,000 guests have already experienced how well prepared it is for this job during the opening on May 31 and June 1, 2005 – since then hundreds of thousands more fans have visited.

The ultra-modern stadium is enclosed by 6,500 sq. m of food and beverage and adventure areas, including a Lego-club for children and conference rooms fed from Europe’s largest interconnected parking facility with approximately 9,800 parking spaces. From the entrance and admission facilities and the multi-color moving acrylic roof to the complex building control system, the Allianz Arena shows how a diverse, complex modern stadium can be simple to operate with the right technology.

A team of high-tech companies ensures that everything works perfectly. Besides the “automation unlimited” from COPA-DATA GmbH, other companies contributing to the dream team included:
VA Tech Elin EBG who provided the entire lighting and a large portion of the building control technology.
SKIDATA developed an admission system with 169 stationary card readers and over 70 handhelds that can guide up to 65,000 visitors to the right seats.
btd Telekommunikation realized a high-performance data processing center with roughly 6,000 ports for the numerous needs of the Allianz Arena.
covertex was responsible for the manufacture and installation of the nearly 3000 air cushions for the acrylic roof which can also illuminate in multiple colors.
COPA-DATA provided the centralized control and visualization to integrate the suppliers as a team.

Coach: zenOn
zenOn® software was selected to visualize and control the entire project. zenOn is a Windows platform independent, open control system with over 250 connections to diverse SPS and hardware components developed in-house. Good communications proved an enormous advantage for the construction and operation of such a large network with so many sensitive tasks in the Allianz Arena.
Regardless of which hardware cooperates with what, which message arrives where, and which actions are repeated across the whole network, zenOn controls and coordinates. The main task for zenOn in the Allianz Arena was to centralize all of the substations and connections between the other named suppliers in a zenOn integration project.

Seamless organizational operations for a game are easily pre-programmed on a single PC. The operator simply enters the time and date into a wizard, and all the required automations are implemented. For the Allianz Arena this means thousands upon thousands of data points, VBA macros, controls, bus terminals and much more are controlled, combined and monitored. Actions and alerts for operators are also created by the project level wizard.

What is a match day for zenOn like in practice?
Starting a few hours before the beginning of the game, the ventilation systems in the esplanades, the parking and the HVACR (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration) systems are automatically activated and regulated. Once the visitors drive into the parking garage, the entering and exiting vehicles are counted and when one level is full they are automatically directed the next level, elegantly avoiding traffic jams.
Running parallel to this, admission control logs how many people enter at each gate and how many guests have left again. Not only does this largely avoid bottlenecks during admittance, the visitor statistics as calculated seamlessly.
Naturally, the monitoring of power supply, ventilation, the smoke alarms and many of the activities in the large network are part of the building control system. Should a malfunction occur anywhere in the Allianz Arena, an alert is automatically generated and reported to the relevant modules. This allows the technicians to react quickly and precisely to any warnings so that operation is smooth and visitors are never aware of what is happening behind the scenes.

zenOn at work
All these messages, commands and controls along with a few thousand data points are fed into the network, prepared and archived into readable files, creating as seamlessly controlled and trouble-free operation is possible. Modules such as the Enhanced Trend Module (ETM), Archiving, Alarms, Scheduler are used in addition to standard SNMP drivers and Beckhoff integration drivers. VBA macros and many other built in features of the zenOn open control system have contributed to the project’s success.

COPA-DATA is the most innovative leader in the HMI/SCADA software market. They have become global trailblazers due to their know-how and experience gained from the installation of more than 50,000 systems in the automotive and machine construction industries, and energy and production plants worldwide. COPA-DATA has been developing HMI/SCADA technology at it’s headquarters in Salzburg, Austria since the mid- 80s. With the program suite zenOn® the company released the first graphical visualization system that ran fully under Windows. The system’s universality from Windows CE up to XP has facilitated full compatibility from the terminal up to the control room, and a sophisticated distributed network technology.

The new generation 6 of zenOn, with automatic engineering and highly efficient reusability of existing project parts reduces engineering time considerably. In addition, COPA-DATA’s STRATON® offers an extremely flexible IEC-61131-3 development environment for embedded systems and soft logic. Together, zenOn and STRATON yield a completely integrated solution. Today’s COPA-DATA distribution network has subsidiaries in Germany, Italy, France and Middle East and partners all over the world. COPA-DATA presently employs more than 100 staff, and has an impressive client reference list including companies such as Festo, BMW and Audi.

COPA-DATA GmnbH
A-5020 SALZBURG · Karolingerstrasse 7 B
Tel: +43/(0)662/431002-0 · Fax: DW 23
http://www.copadata.at · e-mail: sales@copadata.at

This release was published on openPR.