Analytics can help enterprises transform video-surveillance systems into force multipliers, IXP official says

Surveillance cameras increasingly have become prevalent on campuses and within enterprise facilities, but monitoring the waves of resulting video remains a challenge. By leveraging video analytics that provide real-time alarms designed to identify specific type events, a single person effectively can monitor video from several cameras simultaneously, so enterprises can better realize the benefits of their video investments, according to Larry Consalvos, president and COO of IXP, a public-safety consulting firm based in New Jersey.

IXP is a company that has worked in the public-safety space for more than 20 years under various monikers, with core officials developing the 911 system in New York City that was retired only recently after almost two decades of operations, Consalvos said.

“As part of our focus on emergency communications, one of the things we’ve realized is that there are always issues that create workload inside of an emergency communications center,” Consalvos said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “Whether it’s answering the 911 telephones, administrative phones, or front-window activities, bringing more workload into an emergency communications center really needs to involve the very efficient and effective use of technology.

“So, as more emergency communications centers start looking at that integration of security technology and emergency-communication technology, there has to be a way to manage the workload. What we’ve been able to do, especially in the campus environment, is to help manage the workload of the emergency-communication center—when it comes to CCTV monitoring, by the integration of analytics solutions.”

By using sound, graphics or a new window to highlight relevant activity, video analytics can help alert communications-center personnel to situations that should be monitored, so personnel are not always trying to look at multiple screens at once or at rotating views, Consalvos said.

“We create a profile for the client of specific behaviors that would trigger an alarm for somebody sitting inside the dispatch center,” Consalvos said. “So, instead of staring at multiple monitors or cameras on patrol that keep changing their views, we integrate smart analytics on top of that platform, so that when there’s a behavior—when somebody goes from vertical to horizontal, when somebody leaves a package and walks away from that package, or when somebody tries to climb a wall.

“Those types of behaviors trigger an alarm inside of the communications center, which then allows that communications officer to take control of the camera and then to triage that event for determining what kind of dispatch or emergency response would be necessary.”