Page 97 - Security Today, July/August 2022

• Throughout the campus grounds, sports stadiums and entertainment halls, speakers and horns can notify everyone with general or emergency messages.
• Along the campus perimeter, speakers allow staff to trigger warning messages or issue live instructions if needed. Integrated with a VMS, cameras and speakers can be positioned together and allow staff to proactively intervene while staying at a safe distance.
•Intercoms placed in high-visibility enclosures throughout the campus provide a known location to receive assistance.
Integrating audio solutions via intercoms and speakers into campus safety and security systems and creating a “communication umbrella” offers a number of key benefits.
It means that your security solution is interactive. Security teams have the ability to communicate with students, visitors, and staff in real-time, in classrooms, dorms, libraries, and outdoors in parking lots. A clear voice and sound clarify the intent behind the images that are captured on a video camera and increase situational awareness.
When placed in emergency stanchions throughout campus, intercoms provide students, faculty, and visitors with a reliable and easily accessible way to contact security and receive assistance if they are lost or feel threatened.
Audio can also detect voices, noises, or other sounds that are not within direct view of a video camera. Those sounds can be analyzed by a security team, and action can be taken before the individual gets to the building entrance and doors.
Video intercoms can allow a security officer to interact with an unknown person in a remote location—which, if they have ill intent, is where you want them to stay until your security team can arrive on scene. The audio and video recording of that interaction can be shared between security, police, emergency services, and more. Your
security team can provide first responders with actionable data for a more effective response to the incident. Post-event, your team can use the recordings for training and re-training security personnel.
Overall, with the complexities involved in securing a college campus, this “communications umbrella” gives security teams the ability to clearly communicate with the people they are protecting in a variety of ways: one-to-one, one-to-many, and one-to-all.
Always Include Audio
With campus security and safety, the stakes are high, and security teams face tremendous challenges.
Individuals on college campuses need to feel safe. When they don’t, they need a way to use their voices to ask for help and to receive it via a voice on the other end. There’s nothing quite like the human voice in our daily lives. It’s our primary means of communication, and no one should be deprived of it.
In today’s risk environment for university and college campuses, a silent security system cannot be an effective security system. Today’s security systems for college campuses should always incorporate a “communications umbrella” with audio via intercoms and speakers to mitigate risk and to allow people to hear, be heard, and be understood in virtually any environment.
Kelly Lake is the Director of Strategic Alliances at Zenitel Americas, responsible for managing the strategic alliances program that supports manufacturer partners who integrate Zenitel's intelligent communication solutions into their business. Lake holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Music from Boston University and Arizona State University, respectively. Lake recently was recognized as part of SIA’s 2022 Women in Security Forum Power 100.
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