6 minute read
SECURING TODAY’S BUILDINGS WITH AI-POWERED VIDEO ANALYTICS
BY: DAN YETSO
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In the commercial real estate industry, property managers have a host of individuals that depend on them for the overall safety and security of the entire campus. From unwanted access, to tailgating, to incident response, the list of responsibilities is a long one in the hopes of creating a safe work environment, attracting quality patrons and building the corporate image.
And the impact of a security incident can be wide-ranging. In a 2016 National Safety Council study, 39% of employee respondents felt that management does the minimum required by law to keep them safe at work — and you can only imagine how that number has grown since then.
As a building owner, how can you best increase your team’s situational awareness levels, streamline your incident response efforts and create the safest environment possible?
New Technologies at the Forefront of Safety and Security
In the hopes of fortifying their security infrastructure, organizations have deployed a host of solutions at this challenge, including gates and security guards, access controls and a network of video feeds across the campus — all in the hopes of creating a higher level of awareness and the ability to spot, assess and (if necessary) intervene on issues before they become incidents.
For many, the ability to deploy a relatively low-cost camera network has been a key aspect of their security infrastructure. Cameras can be placed at strategic locations such as entryways, gates and other security facilities, allowing the security team to have additional “eyes” on key access points that might present a potential security risk.
But a solid approach to video monitoring is not without its challenges. An average corporate campus video surveillance system can produce hundreds — if not thousands — of hours of footage every single week. And the burden of manually reviewing all of that video footage often falls directly on the security team, which takes hours and hours of time and also keeps them away from their daily duties.
As a result, an already-busy security team is taken out of the field, clicking their mouse through a deluge of video clips in an attempt to spot a perpetrator, with a very small chance of being able to identify the individual much less trace their path across campus to create a holistic view of the incident.
Streamline Your Security Infrastructure with AI-powered Video Analytics
The term “artificial intelligence” has been a common refrain over the past decade. But rest assured: it is here and its impact on physical security will be dynamic. By utilizing a robust deeplearning algorithm that allows for the quick detection and classification of people, vehicles and objects, AI-powered video analytics can automate and massively simplify the process by which your team processes, reacts to and investigates video feeds.
Utilizing deep learning-powered video analytics, an AI-powered video analytics solution can help humans make sense of overwhelming amounts of data and how people and objects are interacting within the real world. A smart video analytics platform is able to recognize faces, bodies, vehicles, bicycles, motorcycles, bags, long guns and even a fallen person.
A few other areas in which an AI-powered video analytics solution can help your building needs: • Assisting - A smart system should be able to offload a bevy of manual effort, sorting through hours of video and providing key information with which a human being can then create insights.
• Augmenting - An AI-powered system should also be able to suggest modifications to existing patterns based on the insights it gains throughout the day, week and month. For example, wouldn’t it be great if your security infrastructure could automatically reach out to the cleaning crew to let them know that they have yet to meet their required number of cleaning operations? • Autonomy - The smartest systems will integrate with other aspects of your building management and security process to actually take the required action. What if a low guard-staff alert could trigger an automated drone sweep of your buildings, sending back video surveillance of the entire campus?
Emerging Technology Bringing a Wealth of Use Cases to Life
As this technology becomes more and more prevalent, the list of use cases becomes equally as robust: • Reduced time to detect - AI-powered video analytics can act as a guard that watches your cameras 24/7 to ensure you can detect critical incidents and prevent them from escalating. • Smart intrusion detection - Help users address issues of unauthorized access by allowing them to search for and set alarms on a growing list of descriptive attributes within specific camera zones of interest. • Watchlist incorporation - Search for the presence of known individuals (that disgruntled ex-employee, for example) that are present on campus and quickly alert the security team to their location. • Re-ID - The ability to quickly re-identify a particular individual off of a live video feed or pre-loaded Person of Interest (POI) list, creating a user journey of that individual across your entire campus. • Vehicle search and alerting - Quickly find vehicles of interest and match individuals to that vehicle. • Person down - Keep an eye out for fallen individuals, quickly react to their needs and spot troublesome areas across your campus.
For the typical property manager, these use cases can quickly lead to real bottom-line impacts. Say, for example, you are currently paying to have a local snow-blowing company clear the parking lot every Monday, Wednesday and Friday during snow season. Because this work needs to be completed by 7 a.m., the snow removal team does their work in the pre-dawn hours, well prior to the arrival of anyone who manages the building. But wouldn’t it be nice to get alerted to the fact that the snow removal company only showed up twice a week over the past month of heavy snow? That insight can be pulled directly from an AI-powered video analytics solution, providing your building management team with a detailed, time-based recap of activities that could lead to a renegotiation with the vendor, a refund or a competitive bid.
The Future of AI-powered Video Analytics
As this technology is only now starting to show its value to the physical security industry, the upside potential for its use is ever-expanding. In the near future, your AI-powered video analytics platform should be able to support the following: • Multi-modal inputs - Incorporate video from any source; live or recorded, fixed or mobile (such as drones or body cameras) and tie that video to badge readers and other inputs across your security infrastructure to increase situational awareness. • Customizable - With an approach that allows the system to “learn” new object types over time, a smart system will continue to adapt and grow to new environments, situations and types of objects. • Open - Systems will only be valuable if they take a modern API-based approach so they can be tied into other aspects of your infrastructure, such as badge readers, building management systems, additional sensors and more.
For property managers in commercial real estate, the impact and value of AI-powered video analytics is clear. With a host of key applications and use cases, the ability to streamline your physical security efforts can save valuable time and money and directly impact your bottom line.
More importantly, a more robust, smarter security infrastructure can result in better situational awareness, smarter resource staffing and improved response times — creating an environment that is safer, more productive and attractive to existing and potential patrons.
About the Author
Dan Yetso is the Sr. Director, Corporate & Customer Marketing at Vintra, Inc., a Silicon Valley provider of AIpowered video analytics solutions that transform any realworld video into actionable, tailored and trusted intelligence. Prior to Vintra, Dan spent over five years at Google in a variety of innovation efforts and has enjoyed leading goto-market efforts for a wide variety of global brands, from startups to mid-sized companies to global billion-dollar leaders.
