Page 20 - Security Today, May 2018

as more integrators and end users discover the business value inher- ent in what was previously a security expense. A security system that delivers actionable intelligence about businesses and city infrastruc- ture can rapidly pay for itself and even become a revenue generating tool in some instances.
Best-of-Breed
So, what types of analytics can third-party vendors provide today? Most people are familiar with license plate recognition cameras and servers. Depending on the requirement, an application like Arteco LPR can integrate seamlessly into a Wisenet X series camera provid- ing license plate recognition at speeds up to 80 miles per hour. It can work very well for traffic management, parking management, access control, vehicle tracking, and crime prevention.
For a different type of traffic monitoring, the Automatic Incident Detection (AID) application can detect stopped vehicles, slowdowns and congestion, wrong way drivers, pedestrians, smoke/low visibility, and lost cargo. The application collects data on traffic flow such as vehi- cle counting and classification, traffic density, average speed, and more.
In the retail space, business analytic applications like those from RetailFlux enable people counting, heat maps, shopper flow, route maps, zone analysis and queue monitoring. No records are kept about shopper identities, only actionable insights about what is work- ing and what needs improvement.
Most of these analytics applications also come with their own front-end software or server to collect and display the data in a way that is useful for end users and stakeholders. Integration with popular video management systems is common as a way to dashboard the information display for ease of use.
The Future Looks Bright for Analytics and Metadata
All of these applications share one thing in common: They collect metadata. Metadata, at its core, is simply data about data. As tech- nology continues to evolve, metadata collection and analysis will be- come a more important and necessary part of the successful manage-
ment of cities, businesses, and security.
Combing through surveillance video for an event that occurred
sometime in the last 48 hours is a laborious task for anyone. Today, metadata generated by the camera, whether it be motion or sound trigger marks, helps staff find events quickly.
In the future, as we see new developments in AI and Deep Learn- ing, we can expect these on-edge analytics to take a big leap forward in the types of metadata they are able to extract. Instead of simply marking up motion events, future applications will utilize object classification techniques to detect physical objects like a chair, car, bus, motorcycle, train, human, cat or dog. If you have a little bit of information about the scene—red car, person wearing black pants and green jacket, dog barking—this will enable VMS to quickly find footage of interest, all thanks to the rich metadata being captured by the cameras.
Another aspect of deep learning is about how we store and restore compressed video data. Storing RAW footage from the camera, par- ticularly as greater than HD formats become common, is not practi- cal due to immense file sizes. We already compress/encode into H.264 and H.265 today because of need for saving bandwidth and storage space. By the very nature of compression, we are discarding some data in the image that is typically not important to how the eye sees. With deep learning, we can imagine how an AI algorithm can learn how we have encoded and compressed an image and then be able to restore even compressed areas of an image during live viewing and critical analysis.
The best thing about technology is that it never stands still. The applications-based model for installing purpose-built on-edge ana- lytics, on demand, is here to stay and should be
an important consideration as you plan for future
deployments and upgrades to existing security in- frastructure.
Paul Kong is the technical director for Hanwha Techwin America and former software specialist for the Hanwha Techwin headquarters in South Korea.
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