Being Smart About Intelligent Video
The announcement by New York City that it’s going to install a complete video protection program in its subway system didn’t come as a shock to anyone in the aftermath of the London subway bombings.
While government installations are most often a bid-based business that squeezes earnings, it can generate referrals, raise a company’s goodwill valuation, and elevate an installer’s reputation.
The bid is the key, of course. Who writes the bid specs? Who helps the bid writer develop those specs when they are not up to speed on electronic security technology?
Software Clears Out CCTV Clutter
Protecting a subway is not easy. Human traffic can be stifling at morning and evening rush hours. How will the installers write the specs for intelligent video in the jam-packed milieu of the New York subway that can identify threats? It would be interesting to know how.
Until the intelligent system is installed, New York police are randomly searching backpacks and briefcases as a stopgap measure. This naturally has the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) up in arms, particularly since the police are suspected of selecting their search targets using a form of “intelligent” profiling.
Convert that picture of hands-on random police searches to thousands of rush-hour travelers being observed by 24/7, high-resolution, low-light cameras integrating intelligent software to identify unaccompanied parcels and clandestine behavior.
That’s the future for not only New York, but also the subways of major cities across America. We know that there are terrorist cells in the United States, and we know something about their locations. But the possibility of unreasonable searches and seizures means that we must rely on electronics to track suspects.
Intelligent Video Scratching Surface
The newest research report by J.P. Freeman Co. shows the intelligent video business has barely hatched from its egg. But with the selection of this technology for the New York subway, the door has been opened wide to rapid growth for intelligent video in networks.
The problem for dealers and integrators that want to jump in on this new trend is there is little familiarity with the way in which the technology operates. Because of the lack of information in the marketplace on intelligent video, a group of suppliers has been selling directly to users. As the chart on this page shows, 30 percent of them sell on that basis now, and they don’t see much change in that approach during the next five years.
That 30-percent number is a far higher level of direct user selling than the level existing in the overall video surveillance market, where it is generally about 5 percent.
So this spawning of intelligent video usage in the huge New York system, along with the likelihood that major cities with perceived vulnerability will be emulating such measures, means that there’s another opportunity for installing companies to learn “intelligent” spec-writing.
It’s time for dealers and integrators to start competing.
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