Inside Atlanta’s High-Profile Security Control Rooms

Established as a gift to the city by The Home Depot Co-founder Bernie Marcus, the Georgia Aquarium opened in 2005 and is situated next to another tourist attraction, the World of Coca-Cola. It not only houses more than 60 exhibits, but features a 10,000-square-foot animal health center as well as educational and scuba programs in a pool deck that’s the size of a football field and 30 feet deep. More than 2 million visitors pass through the Georgia Aquarium annually; though the building is rated to hold more than 8,000 at a time, director of safety and security Alan Davis notes that they limit it to no more than 4,500 for both safety and comfort reasons.

Evacuation drills are conducted from time to time, and Davis says they can get 1,800 people out of the dolphin theater in under nine minutes. Security concerns at the Georgia Aquarium affect both human and animal kind. Tanks are monitored on site and remotely; the pool deck area alone contains 16 cameras to watch over the sea creatures and the adults and kids in the water. Close to 200 cameras are wired into the dispatch area, with support to add more IP-based cameras, which along with security also ensure that the 80,000 gallons per minute filtering through 40+ miles of PVC pipe keep flowing smoothly. Guarding against potential threats as chemical dumping in tanks, “There are mechanisms in place for that scenario in every major tank that we have,” Davis says. “We have an irreplaceable collection; that’s the reason I control it, that’s the reason we have the lock-and-key security systems online and card access doors.”