Page 26 - Security Today, April 2022

“Best of all, modern analytics are increasingly capable of identifying objects and people with greater precision, allowing security practitioners the ability to reduce false alerts.”
they formed, enforce social distancing and masking guidelines, and more. Even amid significant advances in processing power and other factors, cameras were often still viewed primarily through a safety-security lens. The pandemic changed this, as they suddenly became an essential part of fulfilling a wide range of new needs. As businesses sought to cope with the changes brought by the pandemic, they discovered analytics offered business insight and the ability to improve operations. Fortunately, the advances that made analytics more accessible came at just the right time.
People counting tools helped enforce occupancy limits. Heat mapping solutions helped businesses keep their employees and customers a safe distance from another. AI-enabled cameras were used to detect and deny entry to maskless customers. Touchless access control solutions helped to avoid surface contact and video intercoms reduced in-person interactions. The pandemic didn’t change these technologies—advancements were already well under way—but it contributed to a significant change in mentality. Manufacturers, systems integrator and users began to identify new and interesting ways to use cameras, sensors and other technologies. This played an important role in helping new analytics tools reach a wider market. For many, this push opened up an entirely new world of analytics solutions—one capable of not just keeping locations safe and secure, but impacting business operations and intelligence as well.
DRIVING FURTHER INNOVATION
With more and more organizations availing themselves of the benefits that analytics can offer, the market for those analytics is growing. As a result, a robust application development community has sprouted, as developers look for new ways to apply object and color recognition, motion and pattern detection, and other analytics, to now solve common business cases that span beyond just safety and security. The rise of open-architecture technology has further encouraged the growth of the development community, as device manufacturers increasingly recognize that they cannot do everything themselves. By embracing open-architecture tools and platforms, today’s manufacturers can effectively future-proof their own devices and ensure that integrators and end users have a wealth of options available to them when it comes to meeting specific needs.
Tools like facial recognition can be used in a law enforcement context—but they can also be used in an access control context. Hospitals, for example, can use the technology to ensure that only authorized personnel can access infectious disease wards or other highly sensitive areas. Likewise, government and military
facilities can use facial recognition as an extra line or defense to protect secure locations. License plate recognition can be used to identify the perpetrator of a crime, but it can also be used to identify a delivery vehicle and automatically unlock a loading bay gate. In the context of the pandemic, training cameras to verify that customers are masked is important—but in other contexts, a customer intentionally covering their face might be a red flag worthy of issuing a security alert.
These new capabilities challenge what it means to be a “security” tool—cameras can be trained to identify people loitering where they shouldn’t be or recognize aggressive behavior, but they can also be trained to keep an eye on fall risks in hospitals or monitor heat or pressure levels in industrial facilities. These applications can all have a major impact on safety and security that go far beyond the camera’s traditional surveillance uses. And this doesn’t even touch on the growing business intelligence and operations uses for these devices, which can observe shelves and issue out-of-stock alerts, track customer movement and better plan store layouts, help businesses improve the efficiency of their scheduling, and countless other uses. As these applications grow, so too do the opportunities for developers. Integrators and end users will increasingly have an abundance to choose from when it comes to analytics solutions, and manufacturers’ embrace of open-architecture platform has set the table for a strong future in the industry.
THE FUTURE OF VIDEO SURVEILLANCE IS ANALYTICS
A convergence of factors—including the advent of Deep Learning Processing Units, a robust open development community, more intelligent devices trained on better training data, and a new willingness to embrace cameras for purposes outside of traditional security—has led to an analytics renaissance. With smarter surveillance solutions now in the hands of more enterprises than ever, the face of security has changed. No longer is focused solely on preventing theft, tracking suspects, or identifying culprits after the fact. Today’s technology allows businesses to approach safety and security from a wide range of angles, many of which enable security personnel to respond to events in real-time, improving response times and potentially allowing them to address dangerous situations before they can escalate. What’s more, with modern video analytics, security professionals can now provide value beyond safety and security--now offering the ability to deliver business intelligence.
Analytics has always held promise, but recent technological advancements have brought possibilities that once felt like Hollywood magic into the real world. As new and exciting analytics use cases emerge, the video surveillance industry
will continue its transformation. Today’s analytics solutions can have a significant impact on any business—in any industry.
Robert Muehlbauer is the senior manager of business development at Axis Communications.
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APRIL 2022 | SECURITY TODAY
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES