Page 18 - Campus Security Today, July/August 2024

CAMPUS PARKING SECURITY
CAMPUS PARKING PROBLEMS: MODERN SECURITY SOLUTIONS
AUTHOR
DREW PACINO, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER, TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION, AXIS COMMUNICATONS
P arking: for many, it’s an everyday fact of life. Whenever we drive somewhere, we must consider parking, and often, that parking experience sets our mood and expectations for the rest of the journey. Whether a quick grocery store pickup or long-term airport parking, the parking lot is an integral part of whatever type of campus you’re visiting.
This includes destinations like retail stores, your local high school, hospitals, and the park-and-ride systems present in major cities. One thing all of these different places have in common? Their
goal is to provide visitors with a pleasant, stress-free experience, even after you’ve exited your car. There are three main elements that come into play when we talk about what modern security solutions can do for parking situations, regardless of the size of the lot: safety and security, the cost factor, and the need for operations to run fric- tionlessly and efficiently. Security, safety and an understanding of location and direction should be felt the second you step foot on a campus, whatever that campus consists of. Parking lots and parking related technologies play a big role in improving flow, increasing safety and security and promoting economic activity.
SECURING SPACES AND SAFEGUARDING PEOPLE
When we think of security solutions, safety is always the top con- sideration. For parking lots, this means that vehicles should be kept safe even when parked overnight or long-term, and people should feel comfortable walking to, from, and within the lots at all times of day. However, common safety issues plaguing parking lots in- clude potential theft or vandalism related to vehicles, and people being assailed as they walk to their cars—especially in lots that are tucked in campus corners or located on the fringe.
Key security solutions for ensuring parking lot safety include audio deterrents, cameras, and AI alerts, all of which help to enhance security and scale the efforts of campus staff. A camera may seem like an obvious solution, but with built-in, AI-based analytics grow-
ing more intelligent by the day, cameras now offer so much more than simple vis- ibility. Loitering detection, for instance: AI analytics in a camera can detect a group of people hanging out in a parking lot ei- ther too long or after hours, triggering an automatic alert. That alert can first be sent out via an audio recording, which can be something as simple as a speaker in the
lot saying, “This parking lot is currently closed,” or even warning the loiterers about trespassing. These analytics can also send automatic alerts to security personnel on campus, who can then make their way over to check the situation out in a quick and efficient fashion.
PAID PARKING CONSIDERATIONS
Paid parking puts forth another key consideration (and challenge) for campus parking lots: How to ensure payment? First off, paid parking can have many benefits including providing access to valuable data, producing revenue to defray costs or reinvest, and increasing parking turnover and availability. Commercial parking could be a parking garage that’s serves an office building but also has paid spaces for the general public, a college campus with dif- ferent lots for teachers and students at varying price points, or an airport or transportation campus that services different terminals. But when we think about ways to shore up parking payments, we don’t often think of security solutions as fitting into the equa- tion; we typically think of booth attendants at the parking facility entrance/exit, or parking enforcement that trawls lots looking for passes on cars. Solutions like these might work for some scenarios, but they aren’t infallible, and things will always slip through the cracks due to human error.
The same cameras that are already in parking lots to enforce safety and security can also come in handy when it comes to paid parking. With new technology like license plate recognition (LPR), typical ticketing systems can be eliminated completely, as LPR can function in a few different—and valuable—ways. In a traditional park- ing garage that sees new cars every day instead of the same vehicles, LPR can note plates as they enter and exit the garage, automatically sending the parking bill to the address registered to the vehicle. For restricted parking zones or permitted parking like college campuses or private residential lots, LPR can identify whether or not a vehicle can/should be in the area and enact the next steps accordingly.
These capabilities can go even further, but they require a degree of integration and coordination among various teams. For example, instead of sending a parking bill to an address on file with the DMV, organizations have the opportunity to set up a parking app with a third party. These types of apps are already in use in parking lots and garages across the globe, usually in areas that would offer traditionally metered parking, and allow people to pay from their phones in real time instead of physically with cash. By integrating LPR with apps like these, payment can happen automatically without any time delays.
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