MBA dissertation

Casino Exclusion Technique Exploration - Framework Development

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the academic requirements for the degree of MASTERS IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, Graduate School of Business, Faculty of Management, University of Natal (Durban). 

Selecting the appropriate biometric for a specific application is extremely difficult, due to the large number of possible solutions, the various role players and conflicting supplier advice.  The founder of I-Cube obtained a first grade pass for his MBA dissertation.  This is now made freely available so that the appropriate biometric solution can be selected. 

The new National Gambling Bill introduces a system of voluntary and court-ordered exclusion of problem gamblers from casinos.  A wide range of exclusion techniques for access control could be applied to South African casinos.  However, there are no clear criteria on which to base the decision of which system is to be implemented.  Various role players need to be considered to determine what can be deployable in casino applications.  

A framework, from a business perspective, is proposed which allows multiple role players and varied criteria to effectively evaluate a range of possible solutions.  The framework is applied to the role players affected by the proposed exclusion of problem gamblers from gambling.  The main role players evaluated a number of possible exclusion techniques according to a range of important criteria. 

The current solution of a security guard at the entrance is superior according to the casino operations department.  The casino marketing division places a high emphasis on ease of use for the public.  Of the alternative solutions, comparison-based solutions (using an identity book) were preferred by Gambling Anonymous while card-based solutions (proximity card) was found to be preferable by the public.  The casino surveillance department preferred non-contact, overt, biometric acquisition (such as iris recognition). 

Covert biometric acquisition (face recognition) is found to be the most acceptable to all the role players, with fingerprint recognition being the least acceptable.  The application of the framework allowed multimodal exclusion techniques (face recognition linked to casino loyalty cards) to emerge as a promising way forward.

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I-Cube.   All rights reserved.  Revised: January 13, 2008 .