AI-driven technology can enhance control rooms, says Michael Brewer, Regional Marketing Manager, North America at Bosch Security and Safety Systems.

“The right technology”

Control rooms are the core of an organization’s security operations.

They are where security personnel learn about events that need attention, focus staff on mitigating risks and conduct investigations into incidents that have occurred.

Choosing the right technology that aggregates and delivers consolidated data to security operators is essential to helping them make informed decisions – so they can trigger the right actions and deploy a swift response to improve security and safety.

Alerting to potential security risks

Video security cameras with built-in AI or video analytics understand what they are seeing to interpret scenes, monitor risks against a threshold and alert people the moment a threat happens.

An AI-enabled video camera can often identify potential incidents faster than security staff can.

It monitors and detects events in real time, which is essential for critical incidents, such as break-ins.

Video analytics can be applied in many ways, including object detection, loitering detection, intrusion detection for theft prevention and much more.

In addition, audio analytics built-in to the AI-enabled camera enables the detection of specific sounds, like a gunshot, that alert to a critical situation.

Seamless integration of the analytics with a video management system (VMS) with built-in alarm management capabilities ensures that control room operators have access to the right information at the right time.

It facilitates surveillance automation by allowing the creation of rules for specific events, alerting control room operators to prompt immediate action.

Early detection of risks is essential to help operators respond before potential situations occur.

Deterring theft and damage

Once an event that needs immediate attention is detected – such as a person loitering on the property or a perimeter breach at a secure facility, control room operators must act quickly to help deter theft or damage.

If the surveillance system is integrated with communications capabilities, such as an IP horn loudspeaker installed near critical exterior cameras, the operator can speak directly to the intruder – warning them that they are trespassing on private property and alerting them that they are under surveillance.

With communications direct from the control room operator, the intruder may flee before inflicting damage or theft.

If needed, the operator can also escalate the communications, informing the intruder that the local authorities have been contacted.

Simultaneously, control room operators can react quickly to changing situations.

If the VMS has threat level management capabilities, automated actions can be initiated in critical safety or security related situations, like fire or aggression.

When activated in the VMS, a threat level can swiftly change user permissions, access control, video surveillance, intrusion panel settings and trigger more actions.

Speeding event investigations

After an event has occurred, security personnel can spend a significant amount of time searching through video to find evidence of the event.

AI-enabled cameras not only detect risks that need attention, but they also record metadata along with the video – capturing data on objects in the scene.

The metadata is very compact and enables recordings to be searched through quickly.

When searching for relevant events in video archives, it is critical to quickly locate results, even if the exact time of the incident is unknown.

With recorded metadata, the VMS can scan it to find specific events quickly, improving the efficiency of operators.

Even a huge recording database can be scanned for a specific event within seconds.

Operators can search for any motion in a selected area or find specific events in recorded video data, such as objects entering or leaving an area, traversing a route, loitering in an area and more.

For example, it can be used to find a person present near building entrances and exits, locate a car moving on a specific street observed by multiple cameras, find a person appearing in selected cameras during a specific time range or to find a car of a specified color entering the parking lot and more.

The software searches the metadata, so operators do not need to manually replay recordings to locate the video evidence.

It is even possible to search, using the same search task, across multiple cameras simultaneously, to help discern a person’s or vehicle’s actions as they moved across the field of view of multiple cameras.

The ability to quickly locate relevant video and save the files in an evidence log helps to significantly reduce the time and effort spent by operators in investigating incidents that have occurred.

Sharing investigation results through an incident export that contains footage from multiple cameras at different moments in time also makes evidence reporting easier.

Investigate events while protecting privacy

Across the world, various privacy regulations exist that control the handling of personal information.

The ability to anonymize video streams is important to facilitate compliance with ethical data handling practices and legal guidelines.

However, control room operators must ensure a facility is secure and know what is happening inside and outside, so balancing personal privacy with security and safety measures is crucial.

Utilizing an AI-based privacy overlay can anonymize persons in the field of view of selected video streams.

It removes personal data from videos by pixelating the whole person without exposing their unique identity.

Situational awareness of where a person is in a particular area without identifying them is still possible with descriptive information such as clothing type or color.

It helps to maintain the safety and security of people and property by visualizing the right information at the right time while protecting the personal privacy of individuals captured on video – ensuring compliance with data protection laws and regulations worldwide.

If necessary, unprocessed video footage can be turned over to law enforcement.

Choosing the right technology for control rooms

When selecting technology for control rooms, resiliency should be a key consideration, especially at critical sites.

For example, the VMS should provide maximum resilience with continuous live video and playback, regardless of the interruption.

It should protect against multiple failure scenarios, so that cameras can keep recording and streaming live video even when multiple system components fail simultaneously.

For example, the VMS should keep operations running even if both management and recording servers fail.

It should not affect monitoring capabilities for control room operators.

Seamless integration with a broad range of security domains, such as access control, intrusion detection and communications systems also adds value at every touchpoint.

This ensures control room operators have access to all relevant information at the right time via one intuitive interface.

With an integrated system, control room operators can view cameras, control doors and see alarm panel status and events on a graphical map, as well as manage video streams and arm and disarm panels.

They can perform video verification to increase the security level at doors and have one interface to receive alarms, process them and ensure that security personnel can follow up as needed – reducing complexity.

The specific needs of each organization will drive the control room technology that is the best fit to improve security and safety levels.

Knowing the full capabilities available can help organizations increase the efficiency and effectiveness of operators, while maximizing their control of the facility.

This article was originally published in the July edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.