Acadian AI-Enabled False Alarm Fight Earns Marvel Runner-Up Nod
The Calipsa False Alarm Platform has allowed Acadian Monitoring Services to decrease response times to true alarms by about 35%.
Amid contending with a historic pandemic and record-breaking hurricane season, Louisiana-based Acadian Monitoring Services (AMS) found a way to up its already formidable game. During 2020, the company, which services and monitors around 130,000 customers from its central stations in Lafayette, Baton Rouge and Elk Grove Village, Ill., eliminated its total false and nuisance alarms by 96%. Its secret weapon: the Calipsa False Alarm Filtering Platform.
“Acadian Monitoring Services is always looking for new and innovative solutions. While we are part of a very large company, we are still very much a small, nimble monitoring company. Because of that we can go out and create special integrations with new products or startup companies that we believe in, and that some of our competitors might not have the time to devote to. Consequently, we offer a large number of unique services,” says AMS Senior Director Brandon Niles.
The Calipsa False Alarm Filtering Platform is an AI-powered, Cloud-based video analytics solution. The platform uses deep learning algorithms to recognize if an alarm has been caused by human or vehicle movement. It filters out any that are not caused by this, presenting only genuine alarms to operators. AMS now uses the solution Calipsa via its seamless integration with Immix’s alarm receiving platform.
This adoption, adaption, deployment and success with leading-edge technology has resulted in Acadian Monitoring Services being named a runner-up for the 2021 TMA/SSI Monitoring Technology Marvel Award. It’s a heck of a way to add to its parent company, Acadian Ambulance, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. According to the firm, it is the world’s largest privately owned ambulance business.
The benefits AMS has realized benefits due to the use of Calipsa are far-reaching. It has afforded the firm the ability to adopt improvements in prioritization of true events and has also helped decrease response times to true alarms by about 35%. The technology has also improved operators’ job satisfaction, reducing employee turnover around 5%. According to AMS, its operators can now monitor more cameras during their shift as false alarm fatigue is reduced.
AMS was one of the first North American central stations to adopt Calipsa’s platform and thusly has served as a case study for other monitoring providers considering the solution. It is just one example of how the company stays abreast of new technology and ahead of the proverbial curve.
“Currently, most of our AI products tend to focus on false alarm filtering, but as this grows and evolves I can see it allowing us to provide services that we never thought possible before,” says Niles. “AI’s ability to drill down and utilize multiple datasets to identify the desired or undesired activity allows for monitoring companies to provide more services to businesses while they have people at their facilities.”
AMS also operates as a wholesale monitoring provider to dealer partners, which it claims are reaping the rewards of the Calipsa technology as well. The company contends those dealers now spend less time at their clients’ sites for false alarm management and there is a lower risk of cameras being disarmed due to high false alarm volumes. Installation of Calipsa is said to also take just minutes without hardware, meaning dealers spend less time onsite installing analytics devices on cameras.
“We provide a wide range of video services that we can customize to our dealers,” adds Niles. “Additionally, we resell equipment and software to our dealer partners to help them gain as much margin as possible in dealing with their customers. We are emphasizing our video services and putting greater priority to higher RMR services such as video concierge and gate management.
In our video center, the vast majority of the growth this past year has been seen with car dealerships and our video concierge services.”
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