International. Despite the large amount of video data collected, statistics show that only 10 percent of the data is ever used and most lose its value seconds after being generated. Why use such a limited amount of data?
Sean Murphy, Regional Marketing Director of Video Systems, Bosch Security Systems, stressed that many security organizations focus on providing the right information in the event of an emergency or providing the right evidence after a criminal act. However, the fact is that a new video security system can be a great investment. Along with the associated service, maintenance, and administration costs, most video systems are currently considered as overhead.
So how can you maximize the value of your video system? Video analytics ensure that surveillance footage is continuously analyzed in real time to alert users to things that require attention. This helps organizations make sense of video data and adds an extra layer of protection by providing alerts to potential security risks before or when they occur, such as detecting laziness in a parking lot or a breach in the perimeter outside of business hours.
Video analytics can be programmed to alert about things like line/perimeter crossing, illegal parking, loitering: people counting, speeding in areas like parking lots, color match alerts. These are just a few of the ways that video analytics can help improve security.
Integrating analytical alerts with other security systems allows organizations to use data to trigger responses from other components of the security solution. This can increase overall security, better mitigate risks, and reduce complexity for users to improve efficiency.
For example, smart cameras equipped with video analytics can initiate intrusion detection system events when alarms are triggered. The analytical alert may immediately fail a corresponding point on the dashboard. This can cause the panel to communicate the alarm to the central station or send video snapshots to security personnel.
In a retail store or warehouse environment, video analytics can also alert you to an emergency exit that has been blocked by a pallet of boxes or other object. By using an inactive object rule, the SCAN IP camera can alert when an object remains in the area longer than a predefined amount of time.
When this occurs, the alert may generate an error at a point in the intrusion control panel, which can then send an email or text message with a video snapshot to the store or warehouse administrator. This can help prevent code violations and unsafe conditions.
Extending beyond security
Not only can video analytics detect threats, alert you to security breaches, and help enforce health and safety regulations, but it can also do much more. It can enable organizations to reuse data for new uses for the business, offering valuable insights to other departments within an organization, such as providing the ability to analyze behavior in retail stores to help merchants create more effective visualization locations.
How is this possible? Analytics can provide organizations with the additional insights into the video data they need to reuse it for business advantage. Cameras can interpret data directly at the source and reallocate it to help organizations make smarter decisions. By providing business information that goes beyond conventional security applications, new functionality can be easily added to a video security system.
This includes monitoring presence to reduce utility bills, identifying patterns in customer activity to improve sales, and distinguishing roadblocks to optimize retail store design and increase customer satisfaction.
Improving customer satisfaction
People counting and crowd detection can also help organizations improve customer satisfaction by monitoring long lines or people gathered in an area, indicating that additional assistance may be needed.
In this way, video analytics can help organizations reduce costs, increase efficiency, and improve sales.
The organization gets greater value from the system and a return on investment that can be measured in tangible business results. So, the video system is no longer considered overload.
Overall, using video analytics as part of an integrated security system and fully utilizing the data gleaned from analytics can help you better meet your organization's security needs and extend surveillance data to deliver additional business benefits. I believe that all companies should be able to take advantage of these advances in technology, without the need for an additional investment or a licensing fee.
Every business is different, and new analytics solutions must be adaptable to meet your exact needs. Thinking beyond security opens up video analytics to revolutionize the way video data will be used in the future and can take data usage to a whole new level.
