Video Analytics: The Key to Centralized Security, Management, & More

Video Analytics, Centralized

Multi-site organizations face unique security challenges, but regardless of industry, all could benefit from the centralized management of their business intelligence. By centralizing video analytic management from all sites, these organizations can not only comprehensively enhance security measures, but can also view aggregate data from all remote sites to uncover trends across locations, boost real-time alerting, and optimize operations and response. Multi-site video analytics is the key to unprecedented, cross-site intelligence for strategic decision making.

Accelerate Video Review

Accidents and medical incidents are not uncommon for multi-site businesses. Although video surveillance may capture some incidents, manual forensic video review is time-consuming and can be error prone. Video analytics technology enables a central hub to review video footage rapidly and accurately across multiple cameras and filter video to pinpoint relevant objects in video. A resort guest may have been found alone and unresponsive; with the use of filters, video analytics can quickly identify when that person experienced a medical episode and therefore unlock clues as to what happened. By examining and comparing medical incidents across multiple resorts, the hotel chain can make operational decisions to enhance their response like, adding more AED devices around the property or making sure secluded areas are checked often. Similarly, workplaces experiencing accidents can use video analytics to determine the root cause of the accidents and therefore change their practices to avoid in the future or enhance their training programs.

Enhance Situational Awareness

When a shopping mall is working to locate a missing child, on-site video is invaluable for increasing situational awareness. With video analytics, a central security hub can review hours of video from multiple locations within the mall in just minutes to rapidly pinpoint objects of interest – in this case, a child matching a specific description. Video content analytics software — powered by deep learning and artificial intelligence — identifies, classifies, and indexes objects in video footage. This enables those managing a central hub to conduct filtered searches based on criteria such as gender, clothing type and color, direction of travel, and more.

Additionally, a video analytics operator can create a digital watchlist to increase situational awareness and speed identification. The operator uploads a still photo or video image of the missing person and sets a rule-based alert to trigger when a potential match is detected. The operator can use the same image to filter through archived video footage to locate where and when the missing person was last seen on the premises. The information that the central hub provides can help mall security guards as well as local law enforcement accelerate their investigation by providing descriptors, general direction, or search area. Following the incident, the mall’s parent company can study the on-site response to strategically enhance training and safety procedures across all locations.

Empower Real-Time Notifications

Multi-site video analytics also empowers organizations to receive real-time alert notifications across all locations. For example, real-time alerts can be configured to notify the hub manager when a person or object appears in frame at a designated time.

When applied to industries like banking and finance, which often have multiple branches across a region or country, managers could leverage a video analytics hub to trigger alerts that bring relevant events to the forefront. For instance, a rule-based real-time alert could be configured to tell the hub manager when there are a certain number of people in the vault, or if they are there before or after business hours. These types of alerts allow for quick review and accurate assessment of events.

Drive Intelligent Decision Making

While organizations need to enhance investigative and real-time response capabilities, large organizations need video analytics for the valuable insights they can provide across all of their locations. By using a central hub to manage video surveillance and analytics, a chain of restaurants that has experienced robberies at multiple locations can compare insights and make necessary improvements. By analyzing the data, they may uncover patterns that make their restaurants vulnerable; perhaps the stores that were hit all have poorly lit doorways that allow bad actors to access the facility unnoticed. This knowledge can help the restaurant chain make strategic improvements like installing motion-sensor lighting.

The Key to Multi-Site Success

Multi-site organizations are unique and complex business ecosystems that need comprehensive data to maintain, improve, and secure their business. By implementing a video analytic management solution that empowers centralized management, multi-site businesses can comprehensively and holistically improve safety, security, response, and strategy across every department and every location in their purview.

Interested in learning more about multi-site video analytics solutions? Check out BriefCam Nexus and the 2024 M1 version release:

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2021, and has been refreshed and updated for accuracy.