Page 6 - Campus Security & Life Safety, January/February 2019

"It may be difficult to imagine that a solution leveraging cutting-edge video AI technology can be affordable..."
By Michael Adair
How Video AI Can
Open Schools’ Eyes
to Enhanced Safety
proposed solutions that get a lot of attention, such as arming teach- ers and other school employees, are often hotly debated—a survey of Michigan teachers found that 71 percent opposed allowing school employees to carry concealed guns on campus and 67 per- cent said it wouldn’t be effective in preventing gun violence in schools.1 Emerging innovations in video AI offer answers that cir- cumvent such debates and focus only on the straightforward objec- tive of delivering greater safety to schools, without adding any more risk to the equation.
Amidst politicians, school administrators and others looking to the past and the future for solutions, endlessly debating funding, leg- islation, technology and more, video AI can cut through the noise and offer a sensible solution best-fit for the present. The latest video AI solutions can generate real-time, intelligent insights, equipping schools with a powerful, self-learning sensor capable of monitoring, detecting and interpreting behaviors and movements by people across physical settings, as well as identifying objects that may pres- ent a potential threat. The key reasons video AI can be the answer schools have been looking for are simple: the technology can be extremely easy to adopt, its capabilities make it remarkably effective and it can make a major difference in both crisis situations as well as everyday safety.
Safety Innovation Within Reaching Distance
It may be difficult to imagine that a solution leveraging cutting-edge video AI technology can be affordable, easy to deploy and utilize, but that’s precisely the case. With the introduction of any novel, emerging innovation, a feeling tends to persist that they will not be able to make a realistic impact on everyday lives anytime soon. The reasons for this range from the costs being astronomical, to certain solutions demanding drastic upheavals from a behavioral, technnical or infra- structural standpoint that simply aren’t feasible. Put into the context of schools and their often-strapped budgets, these challenges are amplified even further. Which makes it all the more remarkable that video AI-enabled safety technology is very much an accessible and cost-effective option.
Why? For one, video AI is a software solution that works with existing, conventional security cameras. Rather than needing any fancy new machinery or hardware, this technology simply utilizes footage and livestreams of the security camera set-up schools already
advanced technology
In recent years, tragedies from gun violence at schools have reached an unprecedented frequency—one that threatens to normalize school shootings as a part of everyday American life. It’s hard to deny that very little change has occurred following such tragedies, with public and political debates often raging to a standstill, until the next incident occurs, reignites the same argu- ments and restarts the cycle.
This status quo doesn’t have to be accepted. The time is now to see that school safety is not a one-dimensional issue. The advent of video artificial intelligence (AI) has made it so that schools can innova- tively and cost-effectively improve safety and security measures to significantly better protect their students, through advanced object and facial recognition technology that can proactively detect and pre- vent a variety of threats.
The discussions around school safety have long been reductive, but advances in the technology sector show that there are several new potential grounds to be broken in the search for solutions. The
6 campuslifesecurity.com | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019