The Business Benefit Of Video Analytics

Feb 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Buddy Flerl

What if your video surveillance system could not only issue accurate alerts as soon as security threats begin, but also tell you when a customer queue exceeds acceptable limits? Or when a shelf becomes empty of a featured item? What if your security system gave you the information you need to improve the flow of foot traffic, while also protecting you from theft?

In leading-edge retail, bank, transportation and other operations, modern video surveillance systems today deliver video intelligence that helps improve business processes in these and dozens of other ways, in addition to providing thoroughly actionable security intelligence.

The breakthrough that enables this is video analytics software, which has improved video surveillance dramatically from the days when CCTV cameras passively recorded video for use as evidence following a crime. Equipping surveillance systems with video analytics software, which uses proprietary algorithms to detect, track and analyze specific activities captured by video, security cameras become “active eyes” that automatically report specific behaviors of interest, in real-time and with extreme accuracy.

Video analytics, which grew from the need for actionable security intelligence, has revolutionized facility security. Systems equipped with proper video analytics software can, for example, immediately spot and report a person reaching over an unattended jewelry counter, a vehicle tailgating through an entry point or a person entering a warehouse outside normal delivery hours — all of which are indications of potentially criminal processes.

As users of video analytics systems quickly discovered, those systems can also deliver video intelligence related to business processes just as accurately and efficiently. For example:

• In a major regional banking system, a video analytics system that secures bank branch facilities also monitors the length of lines at teller counters and drive-up windows, alerting branch managers of the need to shift tellers from one transaction area to another. It also computes the average transaction time for each teller to help measure relative efficiency in customer processing.

• A national retail chain uses video intelligence to reduce shoplifting and to alert stock personnel when a shelf area becomes empty. The system also provides management with data on how long or how many customers spend time in front of a display as an aid to evaluating the effectiveness of merchandising areas.

• A metropolitan transportation authority employs video analytics in its Homeland defense system. The system also monitors vehicle flow on major thoroughfares, alerting patrol units to traffic incidents and delivering data used in over-highway signs that inform drivers of expected travel times ahead.

In these and countless other installations, forward-looking security professionals have leveraged video analytics to deliver the most accurate, proactive security intelligence available. And in doing so, they have delivered systems that effectively double as business process monitors, with huge dividends for the adopting operations and the people they serve.

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Buddy Flerl, b.flerl@agentvi.com, is the CEO of Agent Vi, New York, an enterprise video analytics software company that delivers solutions for improved security, business intelligence and operations.

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