Video Analytics Take the Spotlight at ISC West 2019
ISC West never fails to impress – from the award-winning solutions showcased, to the impressive booth displays and captivating thought leadership presentations, I left the security industry’s largest event of the year inspired and excited for the trends and technologies around the corner. ISC West 2019 certainly did not disappoint, with what appeared to be larger crowds and more significant conversations around the use of VA in end user environments. Here’s my take this year’s show and the shift in our industry’s perception of video analytics.
Entering the Video Analytics Age
This year at ISC West, the focus on video analytics offerings was palpable. Historically, there has always been a lot of buzz around video analytics, but when the technological capabilities of the available solutions didn’t match the hype, interest, and ultimately, end user confidence in these solutions diminished.
Today, it seems that the interest in VA has come full circle, but this time, the demand is met with proven technology. There are many compelling analytics solutions available on the market, from point solutions to on camera analytic capabilities, to dedicated face recognition products; and ISC West visitors were interested in discovering the extensive analytic capabilities being showcased across the show floor. Now that manufacturers are delivering on the potential of video content analysis, users are eager to explore how making video searchable, actionable and quantifiable can transform traditional approaches to security and law enforcement. For instance, police and security agencies are interested in enhancing situational awareness to drive more proactive and preventative incident response. Innovative face recognition and advanced real-time alerting solutions demonstrate how law enforcement could leverage alert functionality to detect and identify anomalous behavior, crowding and persons of interest to accelerate incident response in real-time.
Extending VCA Beyond Security
It is impossible to overlook how the value of video analysis extends beyond law enforcement and security. While video surveillance is typically associated with public safety use cases, analytic advancements are enabling organizations to maximize their investments in video infrastructure for purposes other than safety and security.
From sports stadiums and teams to airports, transit hubs and airlines, and enterprise retailers, diverse organizations are exploring how video data can be used for operational and business intelligence. By analyzing video to detect, identify, extract and classify its objects, video metadata can be aggregated, visualized and leveraged to understand patterns and trends and to proactively plan for contingencies, optimize navigation and space utilization and understand visitor demographic segmentations.
Video is now enabling businesses of all types to deepen engagement with their consumers. A stadium, for instance, can still use the technology to help reunite missing children with their parties or to investigate an incident post-event – but the same solutions are also empowering them to understand how the entrances and exits to the stadium are used; where vehicular and human congestion occurs and how it can be alleviated; the optimal locations for food vendors and gift shops, and more.
The team at BriefCam is excited to see how these significant shifts in video analysis technology and the industry’s perceptions of these solutions impact future video content analytics innovation and adoption and we are excited to be playing a significant part in this exciting transformation.