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Why VNS IVA Solution for Educational Institutes

Welcome to 2023, the year of AI with newborns like ChatGPT and a host of other AI infants with immensely promising future. The massive growth in social media platforms, particularly Tiktok and YouTube has spread the news of their birth and apparent benefits like wild fire. While ChatGPT is hyper active in every newsfeed now, it’s use will become as routine as Excel or PPT, since embracing AI or new tech is exponentially faster now because of global inter-connectivity.

Actionable Intelligence through Analytic and VMS Solutions

The recent pandemic of COVID-19 has intensified demand for video surveillance and integrated electronic security solutions in educational facilities as schools and colleges struggle to safeguard their environment against the pandemic.Educators, students,and parents alike are anxious to get back to the traditional mode of educating students in person, instead of online classroom setting that has been the norm since the spread of COVID-19.

On the other hand, many healthcare and disease management experts and regulatory bodies have warned the high risk of transmission in any crowded environment, without implementing strict measures to prevent its spread.

There is also an innate need to improve situational awareness through innovative technology tools that can provide school management and security staff a seamlessly integrated view of dispersed systems. This can include touch-less access control in administrative areas to analytic based video surveillance integrated with temperature screening thermal cameras or face detection terminals to efficiently manage COVID-19 prevention initiatives, including safe distancing, occupancy limits, mask compliance, isolation measures, etc.

Educational institutions are also exploring ways to improve real time situational awareness throughout their premises and intensification of intelligent response as needed in any given situation in the classroom or on the playground.

Educational sector customers appear to be very keen in implementing innovative analytics to streamline their security operations without breaking their already stressed budgets and to ensure protection of their investment, which due to COVID-19 screening measures such as automatic fever detection, may seem like a temporary expenditure.

From improving early detection to contact tracing abilities, authorities in educational sectors are looking ways that will help their specific environment where the use of manual thermometer to screen for the possible presence of COVID related fever, is impractical and simply unmanageable. VNS has conducted extensive research by engaging directly with various primary and secondary education facilities and consulted with their management to conduct “proof of concepts” and came up with the following key requests, considered by school management to be fundamental requirements under the current scenario.

Analytic based alerts and automated rapid response in case of positive detection.
Utilization of existing video surveillance assets to improve situational awareness.
Overall improvement of campus security through integration and implementation of access control and alarm systems with video surveillance and health management systems.

Touch-less and rapid screening for possible fever for multiple, moving objects.
Face recognition and mask detection that can be integrated with school attendance systems for both staff and students.
Analytic based alerts to raise awareness on the social distancing needs.

Implementation of this holistic approach with key technologies can help create a safer and healthier environment for staff and students, alike. Video Network Security has taken the initiative in alliance with our IVA – Intelligent Video Alliance platform partners Netavis GmbH, Secure Logiq and SAFR in offering an innovative and deeply integrated analytic based solution that is not only holistic, scalable, open and intelligent but simple to use for non-technical staff and operators to ensure maximum utilization and best results. Our IVA integrated intelligent VMS solution can serve as a unified platform, so multiple systems can be monitored and managed from one location at the campus and from a remote management center to optimize resources. This design also ensures there is no single point of failure

Integration of Touch-less Thermal Cameras

VNS provide a variety of Artificial Intelligence based Infrared thermal cameras to screen for possible presence of COVID-19 related fever. Our Stellar, Sterling and Basic Series fever detection cameras can accurately detect body temperature of multiple moving objects from a safe distance and raise important alerts for the efficient management of ingress and egress of staff and students. VNS thermal fever detection cameras are fully integrated with our IVA platform to provide data from mask detection to face identification and using SDK or API can be easily integrated with campus attendance or other 3rd party systems. With extensive and intuitive dashboards, screener and operators can view real-time status of single or multiple campuses, as well as easily manage reporting tools providing alerts for occupancy levels and rule violations by time, day and month.

Touch-less Access Control Terminal with Integrated Fever & Face Detection

Touch-less and rapidly deployable and mobile access control is more relevant than ever now, including in the education vertical, by removing the need for staff or students to touch readers, doors, and other access points physically may reduce the spread of communicable diseases. A biometric terminal with integrated thermal imaging technology with facial recognition and mask detection at a staff entrance that is integrated with campus attendance and video surveillance system, for example, can detect whether the staff member has any presence of temperature to prompt further screening before being allowed to enter the campus or particular area.

POWER OF VIDEO ANALYTICS

Data acquisition today is a cash convertable commodity

Things are only impossible until they’re not…

Resistance is futile…

Advance or AI based video analytics can detect potential terrorist from a crowd of passengers at an airport terminal, or analytics will recognize a face of a wanted criminal in a jam-packed football stadium are all marketed by companies, racing to capture more customers.

How much of this is fact versus fiction is debatable, nevertheless many matured and practical analytics features without the lofty claims have vastly improved the effectiveness of video surveillance and security management.

Let’s see what’s out there…

Today, there are 125 companies offering VMS (Video Management System) and a host of analytics features that claims the use of artificial intelligence, neural networks, machine vision, self-learning, behavioral analytics and more. The use of analytics is not limited to security & surveillance industry and within the security industry, requirements for Homeland Security are significantly different than Commercial Security. Trillions of data points are generated every minute across the globe and they can be manipulated and analyzed to generate beneficial statistical and other data for businesses and operations in various ways. The analyzed data can improve security, efficiency, target marketing, advancement in science, space, medical research and hundreds of other uses.

The next generation…

It is highly illogical to assume video analytics is a new invention. Long before the invent of IP cameras, the first generation of video analytics was using Codec that converted analog signal into digital pixelated signal to process the pixel changes that generated alarms like, motion detection. Conversely, the primary focus of early analytics was for indoor applications as outdoor environments were challenging to monitor for pixel movements due to natural factors including, sun, clouds and wind which can cause false alarms, as an example, a tree branch movement in windy conditions. Subsequent improvements in algorithm and processing power allowed developers to define the pixel changes as objects based on shapes, size, speed, aspect ratio and other factors to define them as cars, people, dog or a tree, so analytics use even in outdoor environment is possible, today.

Business Intelligence and the collective

Today, video analytics can raise alerts in real time, during post event review and define common denominators across multiple cameras during live or recorded sessions to find as an example, a suspected robber wearing a green color jacket who robbed a convenience store. This level of analytics is useful to track live events and to help with forensic analysis to reconstruct what has transpired during the course of the crime. The important thing to remember is, this scale of analytics is more useful for law enforcement and justifiable as compared to an office building environment, where the use of it may not be commercially appealing. Building up on the earlier generation of analytics, the current analytic offerings can be extremely powerful as crime prevention and fighting tools, in addition to producing powerful business intelligence data. Using edge or processor based analytics they can be used to extract highly useful data to benefit many businesses and users from increased productivity in a factory to increased sales for a retailer. The retailer can easily align their operations based on the deep analysis an AI assisted BI(business intelligence) data can provide from occupancy levels, to peak times, gender information to approximate age and engagement level of customers.

Warp Speed…

The new generation of analytics is more purpose built, faster and accurate, but equally dependent on having adequate processing power to achieve desired results, that can vary from simple processing to more complex computations. As an example, an ANPR camera using advance algorithm integrated with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and other characteristics can rapidly capture number plates of passing vehicles and also able to recognize a black listed vehicle. The processor requirement for recognizing a black listed license plate is significantly higher than just capturing a license plate.
In another example, if you are implementing a Facial Recognition system to identify known and unknown persons in a high security area, require careful study of not only the environment where facial recognition cameras will be installed but what are the realistic customer requirements? Do they need notification when an alarm is triggered that an unknown face is detected, or do they want to identify the person from a blacklist, in which case the facial recognition database require recognizable facial details of all blacklisted persons to trigger a positive match alert and necessitate additional processing power and more challenging algorithms.

Facial recognition is very taxing on any processor and is notoriously imperfect due to many dynamic conditions that can impact the recognition criteria. Many basic analytic features like tripwire, object detection, line crossing, masking, directional alarm, camera sabotage and people counting can be simultaneously used in a scene and dozens or even hundreds of these analytic cameras can be connected to a server depending on the processor specifications.
In case of ANPR and Facial Recognition analytics, the number of cameras that can be connected to a server can be significantly less as their respective algorithms will require considerably more CPU and GPU power to perform their assigned operations.

Managing Customers Prime Directive…

In order to achieve reliability, high accuracy and desired results, it is imperative to use best practices and manufacturer recommended guides for server specs, camera resolution, positioning, best lens and suitable lighting, but most importantly the customer expectations, commercial impact and realistic aim must be clearly understood and agreed with the customer.
Humans takes things for granted from recognizing colors to faces, however for analytics or even artificial intelligence, visual intelligence is still in its infancy and it is a “program” that is defined with fixed parameters with some variances and require a lot of learning, before it can detect anomalies and start to make decisions, on its own. While there are visible improvements in ”recognizing patterns” and “behavioral analytics” or self-learning analytics, the cost of implementation may not be commercially attractive yet, to use them commonly in commercial security applications.

What the new generation of analytic technology can deliver looks great, however it is equally vital to not over-promise as many analytic features are marketed without long term testing in actual environments and tend to fall short of customer expectations.
Every project will have its unique setting and the dynamic nature of actual environment as compared to a laboratory setting or controlled environment, therefore if proper pre-qualification for the suitability of a particular analytic feature is not done and expectations not managed, it can become a source of customer dissatisfaction.

In order to achieve reliability, high accuracy and desired results, it is imperative to use best practices and manufacturer recommended guides for server specs, camera resolution and positioning

Engage…

The optimum performance of analytics are achieved with a holistic approach where all parameters and possible variations are defined. Furthermore, not all processor hardware and analytics software can perform in perfect harmony to produce superior results, as compared to randomly selected equipment that are not optimized or deeply integrated with each other. In a real world situation, there could be many unknown patterns and complex environments, therefore even “behavioral analytics” performance can be limited as the algorithm demand on the processor can be very taxing resulting in sampling down of the resolution to save computational resources and therefore missing out on recognizing small pixel movement and not triggering a genuine alarm, i.e., of a person breaching a fence at some distance. This makes it outright necessary to plan for additional processor resources before the final takeoff.

To boldly go where no analytics has gone before…

The convolution, reliability and usefulness of analytics is rapidly evolving, however what we see in movies and television makes it fuzzy what is realistic and what is fiction. This, by no means translate into unachievable results, as time and again even television shows from as far back as 1960’s like Star Trek are living proof that many ideas and gadgets like the Star Trek “Communicator” or “Tractor Beam” were accurately conceived by Hollywood and either already used in our daily lives today, as is the case with the “Communicator” aka, cell phone or proven to be possible in a test lab, which is the case with the “Tractor Beam”.

What is yet to come in the analytics arena in coming years and decades may surprise many industry speculators, however most of the mature analytics feature available today from reliable suppliers are very useful, practical and beneficial.
Live long and prosper…

UNIQUE CAMERA FEATURES Vcom, Vpix, VIR and XLight

Data acquisition today is a cash convertable commodity

Waves and waves of digital platforms laced with artificial intelligence and block chain technology are now becoming a reality with dramatic impact on businesses and every other aspect of human progress. Ironically, without embracing these emerging platforms we can’t progress in many aspects of our personal and professional lives. Early adoption, no doubt offers sweeping benefits for both consumer and business applications. In the cyber-space, AI is nothing new and has been lucratively used by Amazon and Google to Apple and Tesla to make their products and services better, while gaining valuable business intelligence. AI monetization is not new either and has enriched the coffers of search engines and social media platforms like Facebook, who benefited from their mammoth search options to learn “intent buying” behaviors and patterns to create precise and targeted marketing. Facebook in particular has gone beyond just creating patterns and have more actionable data based on the amount of time users spend collectively on their different platforms that they can merge to form a collation of beneficial properties. AI Money Conversion

It is an established fact that video is data, the value of data as mentioned was successfully monetized by early adopters…

Data acquisition today is a cash convertible commodity, and the sources are widening daily. In cyber-space, every keystroke or voice command on your hand-held, carry-on or stationary devices generates a trail of data points that AI can analyze and possibly monetize. Data sources, however are not limited to just consumer devices and now expand to millions of security surveillance cameras deployed in public and private sectors, for the primary purpose of visual surveillance to protect people, property and premises.

It is an established fact that video is data, the value of data as mentioned was successfully monetized by early adopters and now this can be a value addition to businesses and users of video surveillance solutions from stationary retail to enterprise customers who can extract business intelligence and monetize it to improve business performance, revenue and operational matrices.

Data acquisition today is a cash convertable commodity

IVisionConsult with its IVA(Intelligent Video Alliance) primary partner Netavis Software GmbH offers the perfect solution for security professionals in the EMEA region, where monetizing business intelligence from its AI integrated video management system, is virtually un-attained.

Our unique smart security platform, provides remarkable revenue growth opportunities for distributors and systems integrators to attain cost leadership through a power packed line of VNS HD, 4K and 8K cameras and IoT hardware that are deeply integrated with the Netavis Observer VMS. Observer offers exceptional multi-sensor platform with its sMart Data Warehouse that collects, manages and analyzes data from diverse sensors and sources, while creating output for big data applications to improve business performance. The AI based iCAT analytics suite is loaded with native and non-native options to vastly improve visitors services, improve overall security and operations of customer premises.

IVA platform enable enterprise customers to reach their AI implementation goals, predominantly aimed for innovation, scalability, robustness and measurable ROI for the capex investment in video surveillance systems.

WELCOME TO 2023, THE YEAR OF AI

Data acquisition today is a cash convertable commodity

It is an established fact that video is data, the value of data as mentioned was successfully monetized by early adopters…

Data acquisition today is a cash convertable commodity

Category Archives: Blog

Why VNS IVA Solution for Educational Institutes

POWER OF VIDEO ANALYTICS

Engage…

To boldly go where no analytics has gone before…

UNIQUE CAMERA FEATURES Vcom, Vpix, VIR and XLight

WELCOME TO 2023, THE YEAR OF AI

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