by Alejandra García Vélez
The economic crisis has been on everyone's lips during the last months, uncertainty and concern have been the predominant emotions, many companies cut their expenses anticipating negative figures in their sales, sectors such as real estate or automotive suffered a sharp slowdown; However, the security industry is another story, because precisely in times like these its solutions are much more requested in the face of the increase in insecurity rates, an inevitable consequence of lost jobs and the difficulties typical of times of recession.
Precisely, José Cuperman, regional sales manager for Latin America and Spain of PIMA Electronic Systems Ltd., indicated that "so far this year there has been a growth in the demand for security solutions. The main reason is the economic problems because what this does is that there is an increase in insecurity, and that makes the segment do much better. At the beginning of the year there was some stagnation but we thought it was a bit because of the uncertainty due to the global crisis, since many people tried to take care of their investments waiting to see what happened. But that has already been overcome and it has not affected us much." This is especially true in Latin America.
The researcher Bernardo Kliksberg, in his study Myths and realities about criminality in Latin America explains that "Latin American citizens have reason to feel concerned about the climate of citizen insecurity that is experienced in much of the region. For the Pan American Health Organization, a normal crime rate is between 0 and 5 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants per year. That can be dealt with with conventional mechanisms. When the homicide rate is between 5 and 8 the situation is delicate, but when it exceeds 8 we are facing a picture of "epidemic" crime. The homicide rate in 2006 is three times the level of the epidemic, and by five the rate of most developed countries, which is between 0 and 5. The average number of homicides is double that of the world, making the region one of the most problematic on the planet in this field. In the same American continent, the region's rate, 25.1, is four times that of the UNITED STATES (6.4) and almost 17 times that of Canada (1.5)."
In addition, according to data from the Puerto Rico Police, Auxiliary Superintendence of Citizen Services, Statistics Division; in 2008 there were 59,254 crimes against property on the island, in 2007 the figure was 53,937. In the case of the Dominican Republic, the number of cases of crimes against property is 1,284 from January to July 2008, according to reports from the Attorney General's Office of the National District. According to the Justice Report of the Center for the Study of the Americas in Argentina, the figure for this type of crime in 2004* was 406,290 and in Colombia it was 144,891. It is also important to note that according to the United Nations' "Global report on human settlements 2007, in 2001 alone, there were nearly 50 million violent and property crimes registered by the police in 34 industrialized countries.
Due to the above figures, the alarm market has benefited, especially in some sectors of the economy, according to the experience of José Cuperman "all sectors have behaved well. But the sector that shows the best performance is at the government level due to security projects that have been developed in conjunction with local companies," he said.
Integration, the new trend
Given the importance of alarm systems in Latin American countries, it would be expected that more and more advances in this area will be made, not only in terms of new technologies, but also in the improvement of backup platforms for existing systems that are not yet positioned in the region due to the lack of technical support.
For example, Jose indicates that "IP and GPRS systems are not the most secure, because they are not yet mature enough" so it is very important that monitoring stations do not depend on a single type of installation. In addition, he added that "there is technology but it is not being used 100%; what has made people not take advantage of it are the technical problems that arise with some service providers such as IP and GPRS. Many people complain, especially monitoring stations, about service outages, for example someone has an IP address and they change it without warning. Or in the GSM or GPRS channels they do maintenance on the networks and do not warn what causes the system not to work, it goes down. So they are technologies that are and they are very good but they cannot be used 100 percent because of that."
According to Cuperman, this is the reason why the panels that work by telephone line continue to be the most consumed. Then follow the long-range radio, which, says the expert, is a fairly reliable system. These two technologies, which are the most popular, are followed by GMS, GPRS and finally IP, although the latter is more common at the business level.
Likewise, telephone monitoring is the one with the highest consumption. "New technologies that use the Internet are starting to enter the market but they are not yet very reliable because they are still dependent on a third party and the networks are still unstable," Jose said.
However, Cuperman believes that in the area of security, rather than the implementation of new technologies, the trend is towards the integration of alarm systems with home automation systems; also the integration with surveillance systems (CCTV), all of the above focused on optimizing the monitoring service. "Alarm systems don't have many new functions to invent, there's not much to do to them, so the bet now is on integration." Jose Cuperman said.
On the positive note is the fact that according to the official, although more technical support is lacking to be able to take advantage of all the capabilities of the systems, the level of knowledge and professionalization of the area in the region increases more and more, "already many people know more about the technology, what is new about the alarms, they know how they're going to apply it, they know what they want. What has helped this are the fairs and all the dissemination that is in the market to publicize the technologies, "he said.
The figures
José Cuperman says that in the region most of the alarms come from the United States and Canada market, while Brazil stands out from Latin countries. According to the specialized portal Thedatamyne.com imports of intrusion and fire alarms in 2008 amounted to more than nine million dollars. The main supplier countries of this type of alarm for Argentina were the United States, China and Brazil. Precisely Brazil, reported imports of alarms for 10 million dollars. However, Brazil also stands out for its level of exports of this equipment, in 2008, for example, it registered just over 4 dollars in this area; being its main buyers Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay.
*Latest available report
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