4 Areas of Surveillance Innovation to Watch in 2017

From biometrics to video analytics, Quantum’s Wayne Arvidson reveals the areas of surveillance you should keep an eye on.

Video surveillance has become a more ubiquitous component of not just security, but our retail environments, traffic management and the wider Internet of Things (IoT) trend that people increasingly accept as part of our daily lives.

The pace of innovation continues to accelerate as companies compete to steer the industry in interesting directions. Here are four areas to keep an eye on this year.

Video Analytics

As companies become more experienced manipulating unstructured data to identify patterns and trends, traditional surveillance data is more accurately being described as video-based data and used for business purposes.

Today’s analytics applications are being adopted by an astonishing range of organizations to make better business decisions.

Retailers are using video data for heat mapping – a process that captures hot spots, idle locations and bottlenecks within stores – as well as monitoring other aspects of shopper behavior to improve store layouts, customize marketing promotions, and increase sales.

Logistics companies use video to track cargo through rail yards and ports to improve efficiency.

In manufacturing, video-based data is combined with other information, such as input from sensor technology like RFID, to track product flow and improve operational efficiencies in logistics and manufacturing.

By using video-based data to improve business, companies will reap real business value, shifting the expense of their surveillance solution from a cost center to an investment. To realize this kind of value, data must be kept for a long time. That will require a storage infrastructure that offers both performance and cost-effective, long-term data retention.

Embedded Intelligence in Surveillance Cameras

Camera counts surged in 2016, and the result has been significant growth in data to manage. The adoption of cameras with higher resolutions, wider panoramas and more sensors will continue in 2017.

Look for a rising expectation that more sophisticated capabilities – compression, streaming, storage and analytics – will be bundled into cameras for improved value.

The rising tide of data and improved camera intelligence will strain storage and make an efficient multitier storage strategy more vital than ever.

Embedded sensor technology will enable cities to become smarter and more attractive. Expect vehicle and pedestrian traffic to be more aggressively captured and integrated with sensor input from trains, buses, and subways to cut congestion.

Parking facilities can be monitored and the video combined with input from smart meters to reduce bottlenecks and to improve consumer satisfaction.

Developments in Biometrics

Increasingly, biometrics shows promise to prevent the catastrophic data breaches that have become commonplace.

Cybersecurity is a rising priority for public and private entities. In conjunction with the White House, the Cyber Security Alliance launched an initiative advising the use of fingerprints and one-time codes as a way of authentication.

Biometrics shows promise to prevent the catastrophic data breaches that have become commonplace.

Facial recognition is another growth area, where biometric technology is now available for use with body-worn cameras. Both technologies hold great potential, and will require intelligent storage in order to keep the costs of the related data under control.

Facial recognition applications are already being used to identify criminal suspects. Watch for an increased adoption of applications for counting people to help transportation organizations reduce congestion and provide better services.

More agencies will seek to capture crowd noise and integrate the audio with video data to monitor crowd behavior.

Content Aggregation

Video data is becoming one data set among many as “smart” devices become more prevalent and analytics are able to process the aggregated data.

As applications mature, the potential for improving public safety through the intelligent use of technology is high.

Consolidation and integration are keys to unlocking the future potential, making data storage infrastructure a more important consideration. Law enforcement agencies already need to cope with collecting information from various systems – dash cams, body cams, interview room, sally port devices – and aggregate the content.

In 2017, more agencies will make a priority out of simplifying the collection and storage of data while protecting chain-of-evidence requirements. That will grow to encompass public and private agencies to drive coordinated action from multiple partners to include content from systems such secure parking areas and city properties.

Look for developments in storage management systems designed to collect and store this content easily and cost effectively without creating silos of storage.

Wayne Arvidson is Vice President of Video Surveillance and Security Solutions for Quantum.


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