Page 48 - Security Today, September/October 2022

dashboard that lets you know if any of your cameras or sensors are not functioning properly, so you can send out repair teams.
In contrast, if improving workplace safety is your goal, per- haps you want to use video analytics to find out if staff mem- bers are consistently wearing full protective gear in your facility or factory. Video analytics will establish a benchmark if correct procedures are followed or not. This can offer clues that may help you define new routines or protocols to keep employees safe. Af- ter implementing the changes, you can use your system to review results on a consistent basis to see if there is an improvement.
In the retail industry, video analytics improve business intelli- gence. If you want to know how many visitors to your store make a purchase, you can cross-reference people counting video ana- lytics with your point-of-sale transaction data to calculate your average conversion rate. You can then test different marketing, merchandising and pricing strategies to see how effective they are at driving foot traffic to your store and increasing sales.
Video analytics can also help businesses make decisions that improve the guest experience. For example, a resort was able to identify times and specific locations of increased occupancy. They then scheduled more frequent cleanings of the restrooms and high-touch surfaces in these areas. Likewise, they identified times of low traffic and discussed ways to incentivize customers to visit during those slower periods. Occupancy counting can also help identify bottlenecks so improvements to the facility layout or signage will improve the flow of pedestrian traffic.
If your industry is transportation, you might use crowd-count- ing analytics to improve decision-making on service frequency. If you can keep track of how many people are waiting for trains or buses at different times, you can adjust service frequency to better align with real demand and use resources most efficiently. You can also identify times and locations to alleviate traffic congestion.
Facilities managers can use video analytics to track occupancy patterns to get a better sense of how much office space is required and used regularly. Do people use all the meeting rooms? How of- ten do people use a large meeting room? If you discover find most meetings are in groups of four or less, maybe you could consider splitting one or more large rooms to create small meeting spaces.
MAKE THE MOST OUT OF VIDEO ANALYTICS DATA
Video analytics tools take large amounts of unstructured data and streamline it to unlock its value. When you correlate and ex- tract information, you can gain an immense amount of insight into your business and environment.
To unlock this value, you need to consider three things:
1. What internal processes and routines are relevant to the question(s) you seek to answer? This will help you know what
data to consider and from what resources.
2. What kind of information are you able to gather from your
system? This allows you to understand what can be counted
and analyzed.
3. What is your baseline? This establishes a benchmark for com-
parison as you seek to implement changes and see results.
The security software industry is evolving from focusing on
features and products to being more solutions-oriented to help companies solve the issues they face – whether those relate to se- curity, operations, or business insights. By combining analytics from different cameras, sensors, and IoT devices, businesses can not only improve security but also make better decisions and re- spond more quickly to changing market conditions.
When getting the exact data you want is not possible, you may need to get creative. Sometimes the exact data you prefer is not available, perhaps for privacy reasons or because gathering it would be too complex. You can identify other indicators that can offer meaningful, relevant information. Likewise, if you are not certain what tools you need to invest in, your systems integrator or software partner can help you explore options. You may dis- cover a simpler or less expensive way to gather the information you need.
Your software partner can also help you create dashboards to display the information that is most relevant to the information you want to gather. Likewise, you can customize the dashboard to fit the needs of each department. For example, what data the marketing department needs is different from what operations managers or security teams need. While the system’s dashboard pulls from the same pool of data, it can display different alerts or notifications, charts, map views, and updates.
VIDEO ANALYTICS WILL CONTINUE TO EVOLVE
TO MEET CUSTOMER NEEDS
With advances in computing power, video analytics has evolved considerably to extract very reliable and powerful data from our video streams. The security software industry is also improving the ways the mined data makes it easier to display and analyze the information in more consumable ways. Instead of just providing a list of all the data that is available, solution providers are look- ing at what data users actually need to answer questions and how to present that information in the clearest possible way.
When clear and consumable information is available, data from your security system can be valuable for helping your organization make informed business decisions. As you and your team determine the specific issues to address and the questions needing answers, you can identify the best tools to gather relevant information.
A unified security solution can consolidate all of the data, sort through it and present it in a single interface that is easy to under- stand. Reviewed results are part of the discussion as you seek ways to change and improve your organization whether in areas of safe- ty, guest experience, traffic flow or a multitude of other options. More and more frequently, information from video analytics is reaching beyond the security operations center to help businesses and organizations realize a return on their investment using the data their security solution provides.
Fabiola Ruvalcaba joined Genetec in 2019 as commercial lead for Video Analytics. She is responsible for product messaging and position- ing, as well as the execution of commercial and pricing strategy.
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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022 | SECURITY TODAY
INTELLIGENT VIDEO ANALYTICS