Proactive planning around university security threats needs to be considered a priority as the facility comprises of a combination of classrooms, sports stadiums, dormitories, restaurants, and retail stores. Ensuring student, staff and faculty safety is a high priority, yet challenging, based on the diverse and expansive nature of such institutes. The succession rate of universities and colleges are usually linked to their ability to provide a safe environment and offer an enhanced tertiary experience for everyone.
A great way for tertiary institutions to implement change is by investing in a comprehensive security system that is suitable for their premises. An effective surveillance system is the foundation of the security technology stack and adding an efficient video analysis system increases the capabilities of the existing security infrastructure. Including video analysis will enable these institutions to access searchable, actionable, and quantifiable video data, unlocking a new dimension of intelligence and situational awareness, enhancing a safer campus experience.
Expanding Awareness
Understanding should always be the influence to change, and video analysis can assist in providing insight through situational awareness. Most tertiary institutions have a vast number of cameras that are constantly recording video data. Such video content becomes crucial information for the right stakeholders.
Based on the extent of the data and video review being time consuming as well as prone to error, many overlook and underutilize the capabilities as a data source for security intelligence. It is commonly used selectively for collecting evidence when the time and human resources are available for manual review.
Video analytics software enables videos to be processed for rapid review and scene understanding by methods of extraction, classification, and indexing video data, allowing it to be searched, alerted on, and visualized for trend analysis.
Security personnel can utilize video analytics to identify normal behavior patterns within various facilities, buildings, and dormitories – including outdoor areas between them – to determine atypical behavior more efficiently. Tertiary institutes can better understand behavioral trends and proactively design and implement alerts based on behaviors deemed as abnormal after evaluating long-term trends. This deep analysis and understanding offers the knowledge necessary to initiate proactive planning around university security threats.
Some typical examples would be unexpected illumination changes, loitering, theft, or vandalism. Real-time rule-based alerts improves situational awareness and encourages proactive response techniques to situational changes in the environment as they occur.
Enhancing Intelligence
Complex environments require the ability to successfully attain immediate awareness, this can be achieved by efficient response time. Analyzing video data and increasing awareness of trends and long-term patterns offers great benefits. Tertiary institutes often host large scale events such as conferences, sporting events and conventions. Collecting and understanding data over a long period of time enables security officials to be proactive during peak traffic times and to identify problem hotspots.
Heatmap reports indicate traffic trends which can influence impactful decision making, encouraging operations and security personnel to ease crowding, and bottlenecking which are considered potential security threats and spoils the visitor experience. Real-time notifications regarding the formation of crowds or traffic jams can be beneficial to security, however, understanding traffic patterns can be just as important to attempt prevention.
Apart from reducing challenges over time and in real-time, tertiary institutions can also proactively use video intelligence. Tertiary institutes are constantly expanding which requires data intelligence to make informed decisions on planning and execution processes. Video analytics offers great insight about human and navigation trends which assists campus planning committees in identifying road and sidewalk planning for expansion projects and road planning for large-scale construction.
Significant intelligence regarding the utilization of roads and facilities provides valuable, actionable intelligence for preventing traffic violations and planning additional infrastructure. Extensive data about common paths, vehicle dwelling, and average vehicle speeds guides planners with resolving issues such as improving existing traffic infrastructure or increasing enforcement.
Advanced Investigations
Tertiary institutes can benefit from investigative video analysis in the event of security threats not being able to be avoided or prevented using a data-driven approach. Colleges and universities frequently navigate the threats of theft and property damage. Surveillance is an efficient way to provide swift resolutions to such instances.
Investigators can conduct detailed, filtered searches of video to identify objects of interest and analyze an incident with the use of video analytics software. A typical example would be the investigation of a violent protest. The security offer can focus on key factors such as the location and suspect descriptions based on information identified from video evidence.
This feature is also applicable theft investigations of food vendors or retail outlets within the campus. Advanced investigations assist campus businesses with implementing operational improvements and have a proactive approach to loss prevention.
Specific instances require real-time investigation, such as a missing person. Video analytics software enables efficient video review and alert triggers based on information about the missing person such as garments worn or their last seen location. Using forensic review and dynamic alerts, security can investigate the circumstance of the disappearance, track the person, trigger alerts when the individual is detected, and potentially find the individual.
Video surveillance cameras enable security staff to analyze situations in real-time or review video footage after an occurrence. Video surveillance infrastructure paired with video content analytic software benefits tertiary institutions with the ability to extract valuable data to prevent and solve crimes, protect, and preserve campus safety, and maintain a pleasant experience for visitors, staff, and students.