Experts in the field of video analytics highlighted the main technological advances of a sector that continues to increase its implementation in Latin America.
by Security Sales
Video analytics is a sector of electronic security that has been evolving steadily over the last decade. Its importance within video surveillance systems has allowed companies to operate more efficiently and respond to alerts with optimal analysis and better implementation of data.
Covid-19 has been an aspect that has become relevant within this segment, since it demanded even more the need to implement technologies such as Deep Learning or Edge computing within video analysis systems. Now the solutions are also relevant in terms of protecting people from the virus, and thus maintaining the highest possible order and compliance with biosecurity standards.
Speaking of the market as such, this sector is estimated to grow from the US$4.9 billion recorded in 2020 to US$11.7 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 19.0% during the forecast period, according to information revealed by MarketsandMarkets.
The report indicates that the factors expected to drive the growth of the video analytics market are the increased investments and focus of government institutions in public safety, the need to use and examine unstructured video surveillance data in real time, a significant drop in the crime rate due to surveillance cameras, the increased need among companies to leverage Business Intelligence (BI) and know-how for advanced operations, limitations of manual video analytics, government initiatives in emerging technologies to improve public safety infrastructure, reduced cost of video surveillance equipment and long-term return on investment (RoI), and the demand for improved video surveillance.
Intrusion Management Segment Maintains The Largest Market Size During the Forecast Period: Intrusion systems integrated with video analytics can deliver accurate and automated surveillance. If an intruder violates a predefined security rule, the automated intrusion management system generates a real-time alarm along with a video of the event and sends it to video management software (VMS), allowing interested authorities to make fast and effective delivery and accurate responses.
Citizen Surveillance Vertical maintains the largest market size during the forecast period, according to the report.
What the experts say
Ventas de Seguridad had the opportunity to speak with some experts in the field of video analytics, to know their impressions of the market more specifically in Latin America, technological developments and evolution, types of analytics, among other topics.
Several aspects stand out about the evolution of the market, and our guests agree that this technology, which has existed for more than 15 years, its recent development has been very important.
For example, Alejandro Rodríguez, Regional Sales Director- Mexico of Pelco, commented that "advances in edge data processing capacity and machine learning in the last five years have allowed a breakthrough in video analytics. It is already very common to find in the market cameras that capture and process the image, sending video streams and metadata to central processing, thus enabling better reaction times in the detection of incidents."
For his part, Mauricio Meza, Mr. Product Manager LATAM, agrees with the theme of recent developments and highlights that the improvements now "are not only limited to improving security levels, but are more focused on business intelligence and delivering reliable data to other areas of user companies such as operations, marketing or sales. Additionally, they have been expanding their applications to different types of surveillance such as managing the traffic of a city, supporting access processes and even strengthening care against Covid-19".
The emergence of Covid-19
The virus changed everything, and our industry also suffered the implications of this phenomenon, which demanded changes in all aspects. However, video analytics technologies were one of the sectors that could adapt and take advantage of all their possibilities.
"The need to automate systems to avoid contact with a person or device benefited the development and implementation of video analysis," said Juan Antonio Castro, Manager – Mexico of Vivotek.
Meanwhile, Francisco Rodríguez, Manager of the technical area for Axis Communications in Latin America, explains on the subject of Covid that "it benefited the implementation of this type of solutions, and above all an important growth is expected for the year 2024, only in IP cameras the market is expected to grow by 8%; 4.4% for thermal solutions, 34.7% for video analysis, and 11% for software. In addition, there was an accelerated growth especially in capacity and capacity analytics, in fact many of the things that were done in the beginning were focused on this issue. From there also emerged the detection analytics, for example, if a person has been wearing a mask, cough, and social distance. "
Later, facial recognition or plate recognition began to have greater participation, which also had a growth especially for the issue of access control. Particularly this technology has evolved a lot and manufacturers are trying to make it more efficient to avoid human contact, and from this moment biometric technologies had a very significant impact on the industry.
Alejandro Rodríguez gives an example of this adaptation: "Prior to the pandemic, the counting of people was used to measure the flow of customers to a store or to count people in an area to facilitate evacuation in case of an incident. Now, we also use it to know how many people are in a space and if the maximum allowed occupancy is met according to physical distancing rules."
Features to be developed
On this aspect, Mauricio Meza highlights that the implementation of Artificial Intelligence is still in development: "For us technology manufacturers we know that video analysis using Artificial Intelligence is just in its infancy; in such a way that the improvement of technologies that rely on neural networks will experience exponential growth, and as we said, it will expand to fields far beyond video security in industries such as manufacturing, agriculture, risk management and early warning, autonomous content creation, health industry among others. "
Mauricio complements by assuring that "we must remember that the ultimate goal of Artificial Intelligence is to imitate the capacity for discernment and situational analysis that humans innately possess, and that it grows and improves as we are exposed to different situations. And therefore and in the same way, the devices that use this technology naturally "mature and learn" and will evolve to the point of being able to discern autonomously and make decisions without major intervention or supervision of a human. This is currently known as autonomous situational analysis, and it is the natural space where these technologies will have a substantial evolution and improvement in a few years."
Other aspects to be developed are described below by Francisco Rodríguez:
- Have more and more capacity within the devices, that is, increase the processing capacity such as a camera in an office or a microphone.
- We will also see that more robust analytics will be developed, today we can already have plate recognition, even facial recognition, we will see that it will be much more fluid and with better results.
- Analytics continue to develop and continue to improve, so we are using tools such as artificial intelligence, depp learning or machine learning, which will allow us to make these algorithms more efficient to be able to recognize and above all, to reduce false alarms, I think it goes in that approach where we will continue to improve, a lot of ground has been gained in these last 10 years and we will continue to see advances for the issue of processing of information and for security in general.
Verticals in Latin America
Although the universe of possibilities that video analytics have is very wide, there are verticals with greater demand than others, for example, Juan Antonio Castro, of Vivotek, highlighted the following with its most demanded application:
- Retail, Hospitality – capacity control
- Industry – access control, vehicle tracking
- Transport – Capacity control, parking automation
The representative of Pelco, also highlighted the importance of physical security and retailers. "Physical security is one of the applications that benefit most from video analysis. Human beings can be detected in restricted areas, out-of-hours access, intrusion attempts at perimeters, etc. Retail also benefits: you can anonymously track customers, identify in which areas of the store they spend more time, at what times there is more influx of visitors, gender of visitors for commercial promotion purposes, among others. "
Francisco Rodríguez also highlights other verticals and the way they adopt video analytics technologies: "Actually, there are verticals that invest a little more in this type of situation, I think that in terms of banking or retail that it is very easy to observe what the return on this investment is, obviously they adopt it a little better and understand in a more tangible way the benefits of analytics. In other sectors such as industry, critical infrastructure, we will be able to implement it in a better way because they allow us to visualize the criticality of its use in operational processes, which is why it is one of the verticals where the use of this technology is most recommended".
Types of analytics with the highest demand
Facial and plate recognition, counting people and objects, are some of the analytics that are already in greater demand, as mentioned by our guest experts.
Mauricio Meza, from Hanwha, highlights in this regard that "analytics based on Artificial Intelligence have had a great impact on our Integrator Partners since they offer much more value than pixel-based analytics. Through Artificial Intelligence we can distinguish the gender, clothing, costume color, age group, among others of the people who are in a scene. This allows not only a more efficient recorded video search, but can yield relevant data to strengthen business decision making. Another differentiating point is that Wisenet analytics run on edge, without licensing and saving infrastructure costs."
For his part, Francisco Rodríguez, from Axis, complements that in addition to the issue of artificial intelligence and plate recognition, which has already been mentioned, there are also "many other sectors that are using other types of things, for example in a road, in an access, you can start doing analysis of objects and determine how many people are entering in a pedestrian way or if we have a greater influx of vehicles, starting to distinguish such issues can help to obtain more information and translate it into productivity improvements or benefits.
Cloud and analytics
The cloud in security is a service that day by day is massified globally. Its different possibilities make it an efficient option and complement for the implementation of video analytics. Jorge Rocca, Sr. Area Sales Manager South America at Eagle Eye Networks, commented on how the cloud influences the implementation of video analytics.
"We increasingly require processing power to get better data. The cloud is expanding the capacity of analysis across all cameras, from the cloud to cloud services transversally to all edge devices, this is allowing more and more services to play a fundamental role in a cloud environment, "said the expert.
Another important aspect that the cloud allows is that it offers the possibility of centralizing analytics in cloud computing and this results in reducing network traffic and allows the user to achieve "incredible agility". Then the speed of processing and data delivery and day-to-day use becomes easier for the user."
Another advantage that Jorge explains about the cloud offers in video analytics today is to reduce the investment and installation of hardware, and thereby make costs more flexible to integrate them into a cloud project. "Today what the retail market is looking for is to be able to add value, to be more efficient; but doing this with traditional systems forces you to increase the processing power and hardware capacity and the hidden costs that are around it. The cloud becomes attractive because they forget about those costs and have everything within one ecosystem."
Finally, regarding the aspect of cybersecurity in the cloud, the representative of Eagle Eye, explained that the industry combats this through the secure transport of acquisition and storage of information: "The true cloud approach that we have and the levels of security that we provide guarantees us a very high level of security; there are a number of levels that will make it difficult for cybercrimes to occur. From the moment you start with an encrypted transmission, encryption and all the security rings that are put on, the monitoring of each of these rings is guaranteed, and this is essential to generate trust and efficiency."
OUTSTANDING
Implementation of video analytics in Latin America
Although the percentages of growth of this market in our region that our guests gave us did not coincide in figures, they did in terms of this segment has increased its implementation significantly and everything indicates that it will continue to increase.
Mauricio Meza, Hanwha: If we compare the current use of analytics with the market landscape five years ago, the growth of analytics usage has grown by approximately more than 80%. That for us represents a special motivation because we believe that we are a major player in the innovation and development of new video surveillance technologies and reliable data capture.
Alejandro Rodríguez, Pelco: We can say that about 20% of the projects that are implemented in Latin America have some degree of intelligent video analysis built in. Some projects have basic analysis such as intelligent motion detection, others integrate advanced functionalities such as search by car colors or people's clothing.
Francisco Rodríguez, Axis: 10 years ago we started with a percentage that existed at that time, I think that 5% of the projects were involved with analytical issues, now half of the projects already involve that issue of analytics.
Juan Antonio Castro, from Vivotek: Really from the last year in the middle of the pandemic, end users have been more focused on requesting that their projects and technological renovations be with business intelligence, this requirement has grown up to 100% since now everything is directing to data collection.
FEATURED 2
Cybersecurity for Analytics
These are the opinions of experts on such an important issue as cybersecurity and how they protect video analytics from computer dangers.
Alejandro Rodriguez, Pelco: Physical security continues to be a primary deterrent to cybercrime, often starting with access to material goods or equipment in order to compromise them and gain access to the network. Timely detection of cybersecurity issues is based on intelligent analysis of data access patterns (not video) on the network. Hackers try to access resources on the network using mechanisms such as remote access by Telnet. If multiple access attempts are detected from local or remote addresses, an alert can be raised to the administrator to review the event and identify if it is an actual attack.
Francisco Rodríguez, Axis: At Axis we work a lot on encryption issues, we do it with software and hardware, to be able to take action and prevent our equipment from being compromised. A system that is connected to the network or a device that is connected to the network, is a gateway for some malware or some software that may be malicious, what we are looking for is to stop the entry of these external agents that could not only extract the information but also modify it, and this we not only achieve from the device, but we have disseminated a lot of information about good cybersecurity practices so that users also know how to take care of attacks.
Mauricio Meza, Hanwha: Crimes that extract and exploit customer information from security products have recently increased throughout Latin America and the world. Our products protect systems and user information through the following state-of-the-art cybersecurity technologies: a) HTTPS protocol and private certificate features for the protection of user authentication information (user ID/password). b) The latest security technologies in multiple safety devices applied for protection against unauthorized security diversions. c) User authentication and acquisition of image information in each component of the product. d) IP filtering through firewall and removal of bypass and backdoor security vulnerabilities through administrator rights.
Juan Antonio Castro, Vivotek: Vivotek is the first manufacturer on the market to have an anti-intrusion network security package that prevents and prevents cyber attacks.
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