This may seem simple to answer, yet when we search for the available options of IP CCTV surveillance systems on the market, there are so many products and features that can make it difficult to decide on the best solution. So let’s review a range of features that can be found in modern surveillance systems and briefly discuss each feature and the use case.
Motion Detection
Traditional CCTV IP surveillance systems usually include some form of motion detection which then triggers an alert to a user or a group of users. In traditional systems, motion detection simply means that a change in the pixilation within the image sensor – with some additional minor smarts such as sensitivity would be considered motion. In modern system, this is taken a step further with the use of artificial intelligence, filtering of motion based on object recognition (such as a person or vehicle) can be enabled to help reduce false positives. This in return produces more accurate motion alerts to the end user or user groups as simple objects such as a tree moving in the wind would not trigger motion.
Motion detection bundled with the use of AI is good starting point to securing an establishment. Within business environments securing high-risk or expansive assets is priority and having an enterprise VSaaS solution with AI built-in plays into securing and managing such assets through smart alerts.
People Analytics
This is where we start seeing modern CCTV IP systems outperform traditional based systems with the use of advanced AI feature sets such as people analytics. As the title suggests, people analytics is the ability to recognize people and then provide tools and analytics around such models. Analytics such as people counting, entry and exit statistics and even gender all become available. The most emerging trend in surveillance systems is the use of facial recognition. When a camera with AI capabilities detects a person, it can then provide more in depth analytics such as face recognition including appearance analytics. Once the AI indexes a person and their characteristics (such as clothing color, face and overall appearance), establishment and property management, including compliance and loss prevention teams can set the camera to provide proactive alerting. An example of this would be to provide proactive alerts when a person of interest is seen or to enable the ability to find specific events in time based on the appearance of a person – across multiple cameras and sites.
When reviewing footage within an establishment, additional filters may be required to help find relevant footage. People analytics will help with securing premises especially if repeat offences by the same person, or group of people is occurring.
Vehicle Analytics
Similar to that of people analytics, the same can be applied to the vehicles which include characteristics such as vehicle type, appearance, color but also includes license plate recognition. With license plate recognition (LPR), under the right conditions AI will be able to identify and read the letters/numbers on a vehicles license plate, index and then enable search of relevant events which usually include fuzzy logic (the ability to search for something without 100% accuracy). With license plate recognition capabilities, including all other vehicle analytics, proactive alerts can be setup to provide push, SMS and email notifications for when vehicles of interest are seen.
By recording number plates, and making specific number plates as a plate of interest, you can further secure your establishment by having the cameras alert you when a specific number plate is seen. This may be useful for premises where there is a secure entrance that requires vehicles to stop or slow down before entering. This may also be useful when a number plate notification is required based on a specific investigation – eg watching or monitoring the movements of a contractor or employee.
Smart Searching
Gone are the days of manually trawling through hours of footage trying to find a single event. With cloud managed business surveillance systems, modern CCTV security cameras and cloud platforms provide the functionality to easily find events based areas, objects and time/date. Using search tools, users will have the ability to highlight regions of video footage and request all activity that occurred in that region for any recorded period of time. AI features like people and vehicle analytics will allow further in-depth discovery to occur so users can find relevant footage within minutes, not hours.
When you are required to understand what is going on inside an establishment, live video playback is extremely important and you should never be restricted to being local to the recording device. Modern platforms enable uses to monitor activity that is both live and recorded from any device connected to the cloud. Platforms such as Verkada allow users to further drill down on recorded footage to help obtain footage in a timely manner.
Live and Archive Footage Sharing
In traditional systems, downloading footage to a USB drive and distributing is the most common form of video sharing during incidents, investigations or evidence gathering. The downside to this method is once footage has left the recording device, distribution can occur accidently or maliciously across social platforms such as Facebook or YouTube. Modern systems allows footage (both live and recorded) to be distributed via live links, which enables a user to send a clip of footage directly to an external users via a link on SMS or email.
When maintaining security at an establishment, rather than downloading and emailing video files with shares, you can simply send the contact a direct link to the footage whilst also “time-bombing” the link to ensure after a set period of time they can no longer access it.search
