Enhancing Gangneung City Surveillance by Unifying Video & Analytics

ENHANCING SAFETY WITH A UNIFIED SOLUTION

Bordering the east coast of South Korea, Gangneung is a municipal city in the province of Gangwon-do with just over 210,000 residents. Many tourists flock to the coastal city for various attractions, such as watching the sunrise over the East Sea and visiting the popular Jeongdongjin and Gyeongpo beaches.

The city also hosts numerous festivals, including the Gangneung Danoje festival which has received a UNESCO heritage designation and attracts a significant influx of visitors every year.

To keep residents and guests safe, the city relies on a networked video system to effectively monitor and investigate reported incidents.

BREAKING SILOS FOR ACCELERATED RESPONSEE

While the security and video surveillance system had grown to over 2,000 IP cameras, with no centralized location or management, monitoring the extensive video, responding to incidents, and handling investigations became increasingly difficult for siloed operators needing to find and act on intelligence.

In setting up a 523 sqm control center in Gangneung City Hall, the city sought to maximize existing surveillance investments and accelerate video investigations and incident response. It was imperative for the city to implement a surveillance solution that could seamlessly evolve alongside their needs. While many CCTV integrated control centers failed to cope with their increasing number of cameras, the fully integrated BriefCam® solution could easily accommodate future expansion, such as adding high-resolution cameras and applying the latest technologies, while significantly reducing network bandwidth and increasing data storage efficiency.

The city decided to invest in the BriefCam® Video Analytics Platform to help centralize video data and empower their teams to effectively enhance safety and security for residents and businesses, while maintaining the ability to scale security and surveillance operations as needs evolve.

TRANSFORMING VIDEO INTO ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE

The BriefCam Video Analytics Platform empowers control center operators to make productive, proactive, and predictive decisions. Based on deep learning and artificial intelligence technologies, BriefCam enables object detection, extraction, classification, and analysis to make video searchable, actionable, and quantifiable for the control center. For instance, operators can configure alerts based on object classification, search videos using extensive object class and attribute filters, and leverage face and license plate recognition as well. They can also enhance incident investigations with BriefCam’s patented VIDEO SYNOPSIS® technology, an innovative solution that simultaneously displays objects that appeared at different times within a shortened video segment.

“Having BriefCam analytics unified within the Security Center platform has been a very user-friendly experience. The comprehensive video solution is very intuitive, and the menus are well-written in Korean, so it’s easy to navigate and operate the systems,” said Jae-An Shim, System General Manager at the Gangneung CCT Control Center.

EMPOWERING OPERATORS TO SOLVE CASES FASTER

While operators primarily use the surveillance platform to detect suspicious behavior, monitor and preserve forests and cultural assets, and spot other infractions such as parking violations and illegal dumping, they also use BriefCam’s video analytics to handle emergencies and ensure community safety.

Since implementation, operators have been able to track suspects involved in accidents or other events and solve cases faster. In one case, the control center operators were also able to use BriefCam to assist police in tracking the suspects of a phone scam, helping them detect and identify members of a voice phishing organization.

The control center team has also been leveraged for solving sexual crime cases, locating missing persons, and preventing accidents by detecting unusual activity in pre-defined, publicly restricted zones and triggering alerts for operators’ review.

SCALING CITYWIDE SECURITY

Today, the city’s goals are to maximize productivity and community impact by making continual improvements to the city-wide surveillance system. Looking ahead, the city of Gangneung plans to
expand its use of BriefCam’s real-time and business intelligence applications for uncovering inefficiencies, optimizing traffic flows, and urban development.

“Since working with BriefCam, we have been able to significantly enhance our city- wide security operations and empower our control center
operators. Today, our team can work more quickly and effectively at identifying urgent situations in real-time and accelerating post-event investigations. We will continue to enhance the surveillance system to keep our city safe,” concluded Jae-An Shim.

Enhancing Gangneung City Surveillance by Unifying Video and Analytics