Analyzing Video Analytics
Telling the ROI Story
One interesting point cited by the experts was how the adoption of VA technology may be hampered by salespeople who want to avoid complicating large camera system sales. However, VA could at least be considered as a future add-on or enhancement. Rather than going directly for the exotic, the best system sales strategy may be to recommend VA applications that can show a good return on investment (ROI), such as enhancements to guard or perimeter security.
Some of the ROI stories I have heard have been nothing short of amazing. By implementing VA, companies have been able, in some cases, to save millions in operating costs, and have done it in as little as six months. The ROI proposition is something I don’t think the industry is sharing enough with the public. Another example was a Miami-area high school that used VA to reinforce surveillance at exit/entry points.
The result in reduction of crime was phenomenal.
Wide-Area Deployment Tips
Another misconception about VA technology has been that you needed to have it deployed at every point in a surveillance system comprised of several hundred cameras to be effective. A compromise for retail locations was to have a small group of VA-capable cameras that could be rotated toward critical areas in such upscale systems.
Along those lines, another example of technological ingenuity comes from VA enterprise software provider Agent Vi. Its video encoder technology, Universal Feature Extraction (UFE), mixes edge and central technologies by using a process that extracts pixel-level information at the edge and sends compressed data to the system’s central server.
Agent Vi works with partners such as Axis Communications by embedding compact software routines in Axis’ IP cameras. This gives the cameras the resources of an extensive VA “rules” library.
A Powerful Business Tool
I am personally very excited about VA. Presently, one of the best applications I have seen is assisting guards viewing large banks of monitors. It has been known for a long time that having a guard reviewing a bank of video monitors is very inefficient. Studies have shown that a person can only view a few monitors at a time and that they bore of what they are viewing after about 20 minutes.
Major retailers such as Home Depot have found considerable business use for VCA systems. It has allowed the chain to not only perform some standard tasks such as track foot traffic patterns and remotely monitor employee activity, but also with VA management benefits from out-of-stock notification, customer queue notification, falling object and liquid spill notification, child abduction alert, and is able to reduce shrinkage via special molding measuring and identification algorithms.
Additional video analytics information can be found at various Internet-resource sites.
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