Page 20 - Campus Security & Life Safety, March/April 2021

Secure the Environment
AI-enabled cameras are changing how campuses think about security
Artificial Intelligence
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Protecting campuses, including schools, hospitals, business parks and distributed facilities, means man- aging an incredible number and variety of security sensors. This number gets larger every day. Accord- ing to a recent Video Surveillance Report from IHS Markit, 85 million video surveillance cameras will be installed in North America by 2021.
With so many cameras, it is simply unrealistic to expect security staff to be able to monitor and manually search through the vast quantity of data being collected. Today’s campuses need solutions for managing their video data. They need AI, or Artificial Intelligence, to help them remain vigilant and identify when anything is out of the ordinary.
In addition to allowing campuses to continuously watch all their video streams, AI can also help operators focus their attention on what is important. By feeding data into systems that are able to sort, organize and categorize massive amounts of information in a way
that operators cannot, AI can significantly reduce false alarms and enhance post-event investigations.
Deep Learning has Changed how we
Use Security Cameras
Today’s AI, specifically deep learning, is changing how we think about and deploy security cameras. Deep learning allows us to extract more complex features from raw input. In image processing, for example, lower layers identify edges while deeper layers identify col- ors, letters or faces. Using supervised deep learning, we can now train cameras to recognize whatever we need them to see.
Deep learning algorithms do not see video the same way humans do. Rather, algorithms look for familiar shapes and patterns that they have been trained to recognize. For example, to assist with people counting, some AI cameras have already been trained to identify human faces and torsos within images. This frees security staff from
20 campuslifesecurity.com | MARCH/APRIL 2021