The future of video surveillance: going beyond crime to make businesses safer, more efficient and more profitable
Smart video surveillance provides new levels of insight into your inventory, operations and people.
Today’s video surveillance technology offers benefits far beyond monitoring for crimes. We recently interviewed Alex Vourkoutiotis, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder of Caliber Communications, on how the technology is evolving and driving value across the business.
“Traditionally, video surveillance wasn’t about preventing crimes or catching them in real-time,” said Vourkoutiotis. “It was about reacting to crimes after they happen and doing damage control.”
With most video surveillance systems, someone in a monitoring center needs to watch your feeds to see what’s happening. However, it’s impossible for one person to keep an eye on everything. Watching live security camera footage—especially on multiple screens—can be tedious, and it's easy to get distracted by other tasks or people and miss something.
Meanwhile, most security camera footage is pixelated, and the image quality is even worse if you have bandwidth or connectivity problems. Even if your cameras film a crime, you likely won't have a clear picture of who did it or what happened.
How video surveillance is evolving to prevent more crimes and provide more timely, accurate data
New smart surveillance technology uses AI to collect accurate data and prevent an extremely high percentage of crimes. The AI technology does this by looking at every frame from every camera simultaneously. When AI watches your feeds, you can collect a tremendous amount of information with greater accuracy and better safety at a much lower cost. You can also focus your staff on higher-gain activities—not spending countless hours monitoring video feeds.
“We’ve found that our smart surveillance mitigates 99% of theft and crimes on-site while providing metrics that help facilities teams make better decisions,” said Vourkoutiotis.
Smart cameras are also easier and more cost-effective to install. A solar powered smart camera system allows you to deploy security without the need to run Ethernet cables or re-wire your site. They can be easily installed on construction sites, as you don’t need temporary sockets for a video surveillance system that you may take down after project completion.
“One benefit of our smart camera systems is they don’t need hard-wired internet,” said Vourkoutiotis. “You simply attach the cameras to a pole, wall, or suitable mounting point and aim them where you want to collect footage. Since security is always a concern, the cameras don’t store data on an SD card in the device. Instead, they immediately upload the footage to the cloud via a secured wireless connection.”
When you don’t store data inside the device, you’ll also have higher-resolution images, a wide signal range and fast connectivity.
4 ways smart surveillance makes your operations safer and more efficient
The data you collect from smart video surveillance goes beyond preventing crimes; it also helps you improve business processes and efficiencies. Here are five ways smart surveillance can drive value across your organization:
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Level-up your security
Smart surveillance uses a combination of AI and live agents to keep your site secure. AI monitors your feeds while high-resolution cameras provide the best quality images and videos.
When the camera spots suspicious activity, live video monitoring agents will use pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras to follow and zoom in on individuals and capture their identifiable features. The agents will also activate the speaker on a security unit to directly talk to the individual on-site. They will warn the trespasser to leave the premises immediately, or they will dispatch police.
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Better manage your inventory
Smart camera systems allow you to track the items going in and out of your location. You can use the video footage to count inventory, and, of course, smart surveillance can help you prevent shrinkage and theft.
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Improve employee health and safety
Smart camera systems can identify electrical, fire and tripping hazards. They can also see when workers aren’t complying with safety regulations. For example, they can detect when someone is standing too close to a ledge or not wearing proper PPE. Automated voice commands will then let workers know they are in danger. If you don’t want to scare workers with these alerts, you can instead notify supervisors when employees aren’t complying with regulations. The supervisors can then address the issue before someone gets hurt.
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Assist customers as they arrive on-site
Smart video camera systems can detect when customers show up at your location and provide helpful information, such as wayfinding or your hours. At retail locations, an automated greeting can share information about your current promotions. At donation facilities, the greeting can let people know where to drop off their used items. These voice commands not only enhance your location’s safety but also provide customers with better service.
The above use cases are just a fraction of what smart surveillance technology can do. With 5G, the possibilities are endless. Low latency means you can get high-resolution images, share data faster and gain real-time insights into your operations.
“Smart surveillance allows you to learn things about your operations that you never knew before. The potential of how you can use the data is exciting,” said Vourkoutiotis.
Learn more about our smart buildings solutions or speak with your local Rogers representative for more details.