May 20, 2026
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How IoT and Smart Devices are Reducing Urban Traffic Congestion

Urban traffic congestion is a headache for drivers in every city. Luckily, the use of IoT devices and smart technologies is helping traffic controllers mitigate road congestion through the use of smart traffic management systems.
Izvor: a&s International
E-mail: redakcija@asadria.com

In 2018, drivers in world’s most congested urban areas lost hundreds of hours to road traffic. In Bogotá, Colombia, drivers lost 272 hours per capita — the highest in the world — to road congestion, according to the 2018 INRIX Traffic Scorecard. Americans on average lost 97 hours in congestion, with Boston, Mass., topping the country at 164 hours — the city also experienced the greatest costs globally from congestion at US$2,291 a year.

Government initiatives for traffic management, however, are increasing as the drive for smarter and safer cities continues. This and hyper-urbanization in developing countries are major factors in the growth of traffic management solutions, according to a report by MarketsandMarkets. On the intelligent transportation system (ITS) side, MarketsandMarkets estimates the global ITS market will reach US$30.7 billion by 2023, up from nearly $23.4 billion in 2018.

From smart traffic signals to IoT devices, there is a clear rise in adoption of smarter, better traffic management solutions globally. At the same time, manufacturers of ITS and traffic management solutions are working hard to develop technologies aimed at easing urban traffic congestion.

IoT Developments Help Ease Urban Traffic Congestion

The internet of things (IoT) is helping traffic controllers around the world ease urban traffic congestion.

While there is no way to truly prevent congestion, the use of ICT and IoT solutions is enabling traffic controllers to ease it significantly. Todd Kreter, SVP and GM of Roadway Sensors at Iteris explained that in the past five to 10 years, the traffic industry had focused on “introducing the kind of sensors and connectivity that enables us to help public agencies with a rich set of data.”

Rapid development of ICT and IoT solutions offers new possibilities to increase the capacity of existing infrastructure, according to Bas van der Bijl, Manager, and Stefan Hjort, ITS Expert at Sweco. “Communication between road users and traffic systems, and also more and cheaper IoT sensors, provide more traffic information for the systems to optimize the flows,” they said. “It becomes also possible to guide road users around congested areas, dividing the load over the network more equally.”

Some companies have developed solutions focused on integration of smart, real-time traffic signal control with emerging connected vehicle technology — the radios that will be going into vehicles to enable direct vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication. According to Stephen Smith, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Rapid Flow Technologies, this integration provides additional opportunities for mitigating/reducing congestion.

“In the longer term, V2I communication will provide much more accurate sensing of vehicles approaching a given intersection, and hence lead to better optimization of traffic flows. In the shorter term, there are also mobility enhancements that can be provided,” Smith said. For the most part, the majority of traffic data comes from video and radar devices. Applying intelligent software algorithms to this collected data gives traffic controllers the tools to control congestion. For example, video outputs could help traffic controllers determine where cars are traveling, how fast they are going and what areas are most congested.

Using machine vision cameras to ease traffic congestion is one way to do this, explained Matthew Trushinski, Director of Marketing at Miovision. Machine vision can identify cars within video footage and count vehicle numbers. “Instead of a snapshot, traffic engineers can get a much bigger picture of how traffic is moving,” he said. Including this technology in smart intersections can allow traffic engineers to measure what is happening 24/7. Insights from this data can allow cities to make changes and measure the results, iterating until congestion measurably improves.

Urban Traffic Management Experts from Kapsch TrafficCom noted that traffic solutions deployed to measure, detect and respond relied on several sources, from widely used traffic sensors (e.g., loops) to specialized video processing, as well as FCD (floating car data) and also crowdsourcing (e.g., Waze). “IoT is mostly centered on highly distributed sensing networks or mobile devices, such as vehicles themselves that provide raw data to be processed for incident detection using time-series methods,” Kapsch TrafficCom said.

After detection, response plans can be selected from a pre-engineered library or built more dynamically according to recent available resources in the congestion area. In both cases, plans tend to reduce congestion by strategies such as information, rerouting and/or dynamic speed adjustment, according to Kapsch TrafficCom. While daily traffic congestion cannot be truly prevented, it can be controlled for planned events (e.g., roadworks, sports events, etc.), recurring situations (e.g., rush hour) or short-term forecasts. This is achieved by designing mitigating actions such as action plans that can be launched on-demand and automatically according to predefined triggers, explained Kapsch TrafficCom. “The more proactive traffic operators and systems can be, the less impact we can achieve.”

Smart Traffic Signals Make Intersections Safer, More Efficient

Smart traffic signals are becoming a regular part of urban traffic management, helping to make roads safer for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.

Traffic signals are an integral part of keeping both drivers and pedestrians safe at intersections. As traffic control systems have become more intelligent, the use of smart traffic signals to optimize urban traffic flow has become increasingly important.

For decades, intersections ran independently using inductive-loop traffic-detection technology. However, the advent of internet of things (IoT) devices means more intelligent radar and video detection sensors that can count, measure direction and speed of travel, and also determine whether an objects is a car, bike or pedestrian. With this information, Todd Kreter, SVP and GM of Roadway Sensors at Iteris said “traffic engineers at a central traffic management center (TMC) can immediately modify signal timing, including how long a particular approach gets red or green, and then optimize timing throughout the day as traffic volume fluctuates.”More advanced smart strategies for traffic signals address highly dynamic changes in time durations for each and every movement within the intersection (cycle and split adjustments) and also across arterials (offset adjustments), explained Urban Traffic Management Experts from Kapsch TrafficCom.

Acquiring data for these adjustments can be done by using detectors (e.g., magnetic loops) or more advanced sensors, including video-based detection, and radar/doppler technologies. Additionally, advanced strategies are not limited to traffic counting, speed and occupancy measures. Adjusting cycle, split and offset in intersections in short intervals (e.g., 5 seconds) provides continued adaptation to varying traffic, and manages proactive adaptations, according to Kapsch TrafficCom.

Adaptive signaling regulation can be taken a step further with artificial intelligence (AI), using rules-based engines, machine learning or other AI capabilities, including recurring situations and also “human behavior,” to solve the most difficult situations, Kapsch TrafficCom said.

Rapid Flow Technologies’ Surtrac traffic signal system combines concepts from AI and traffic theory. The system allocates green time to different approaches at intersections in real time to optimize the movement of actual traffic on the road.

“The system puts computing at the edge (i.e., a computer at every intersection) to produce ‘signal timing plans’ in real time, collects information on approaching traffic in real-time from independent sensing devices (e.g., video cameras, radar, etc.) mounted at the intersection, and depends on real-time communication between networks to achieve network level coordination,” explained Stephen Smith, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Rapid Flow Technologies. Sweco is developing Smart Traffic, a traffic light controller that utilizes data already available from traditional loop detectors along with new data sources like floating car data, cameras and radars. The data from its real-time and predictive traffic model is fused into a reliable image of the traffic on the level of individual vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians. Based on the predicted arrivals of traffic at the intersection, green phases are scheduled in advance optimizing both the duration as the sequence. Controlling traffic lights in this way results in reduced waiting times and CO2 emissions, according to Bas van der Bijl, Manager, and Stefan Hjort, ITS Expert at Sweco. “In addition it is also possible to inform road drivers about the scheduled green phases, offering the possibility to adopt their arrival speed at the intersection in order to prevent unnecessary stops and increasing the comfort,” they said.

Miovision offers a smart traffic signal platform called TrafficLink, which provides a range of solutions needed for a traffic team to collect, monitor and understand their traffic signals. The solutions include a managed cellular connection, and tools for signal monitoring, video streaming, maintenance alerts, as well as traffic data insights. Their SmartSense component brings traffic AI to the intersection, processing data gathered by its SmartSense 360 camera and enabling vehicle detection and ongoing studies of traffic, said Matthew Trushinski, Director of Marketing at Miovision.

In terms of solution implementation, there are many challenges when it comes to urban traffic signal control. One, according to Sweco, is finding the balance between optimal traffic light control and providing a reliable prediction of the future green phases to arriving traffic.

“The earlier drivers are informed about the signal changes, the harder it becomes to react to the actual traffic situation at the intersection,” Sweco said. They suggest using the latest sensor technology (e.g., intelligent cameras) in combination with predictive traffic models to make reliable predictions of the arrivals of traffic at an intersection for the next minute, making possible to optimize the traffic light control and to inform drivers about the scheduled green phases for the next minute.

Other challenges include pedestrian and bicycle detection. Effective traffic signaling in urban road networks must be able to distinguish different traffic modes (e.g., pedestrian, bicyclist, bus, passenger vehicle) and utilize this information in traffic signal control decisions, Smith explained. “Most current commercial vehicle detection devices are not capable of simultaneously detecting vehicles and pedestrians, and the option of using additional detection hardware to enable pedestrian detection is often not an extra expense that cities are willing to bear,” Smith said. The situation, however, is changing with more commercial detection companies introducing detection hardware capable of integrated vehicle and pedestrian detection.

How Everyone Can Benefit From Data Sharing of Real-Time Traffic Information

Sharing real-time traffic information across different agencies is the key to developing smarter traffic solutions.

Real-time traffic information is only available when traffic signals have a connection back to a central traffic management center. It is currently estimated that more than half of all signals are not connected, according to Todd Kreter, SVP and GM of Roadway Sensors at Iteris. Once connected though, agencies can access real-time traffic information through an advanced traffic management system in a variety of formats. They can then determine a signal’s status, as well as its diagnostic status.

With so many IoT devices being deployed for traffic management, the data being gathered is a gold mine for not only traffic controllers, but also other transportation and law enforcement agencies, as well as drivers. However, only when this data is shared can all parties reap the benefits.

Several solutions can address information exchange between agencies according to real-time needs and interagency agreements. Shared information can be achieved by using a shared data repository acting as a data hub, considering that agreed data is generated and consumed according to pre-agreed roles.

“Most or all agencies can also articulate an agreement for a shared ‘umbrella system,’ each one can already use such system for information dissemination and for coordination of actions across agencies,” said Urban Traffic Management Experts from Kapsch TrafficCom. They added the main challenges were defining agreements as firm as possible for consortia creations, building common platforms if agreed and intensive use of existing and future systems for the agreed goals.

Having data in standardized formats and an open architecture that avoids vendor lock-in are ways to avoid the challenges of data sharing, according to Matthew Trushinski, Director of Marketing at Miovision. His company believes in open architectures “to allow other city departments, third-party vendors and other partners to leverage the data generated at the street-level to make city life better.”

Bas van der Bijl, Manager, and Stefan Hjort, ITS Expert at Sweco, also noted that real-time open data would be used more and more. “Sharing information is the key to be able to develop smart solutions for the traffic in urban areas. When open data is available, the threshold for new solutions to enter the cities will be lowered,” they said.

Current developments in traffic management software are helping to facilitate better use of and sharing of collected data. “To effectively share information between city agencies, a common framework for representing city data is a prerequisite, and developing this common representation is the main challenge,” said Stephen Smith, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Rapid Flow Technologies. For example, Surtrac currently provides an API for communicating real-time traffic information to a municipality — one of its current deployments is starting to tap into this data as part of their Open Data initiative.

Kreter explained how Iteris’ Signal Performance Measures (SPM) was being developed to make better use of the information provided by IoT sensing devices as well as by the traffic signal controllers. “This can provide information on vehicle volumes, speeds, locations, signal status, as well as bicycles and pedestrians and can provide multiple views of overall traffic signal performance,” he said. All this data, when shared, could significantly help various agencies improve traffic management.

Popular consumer navigation apps like Waze are also doing their part to share data. In April 2018, Waze signed a deal with Waycare, a traffic management startup, to bring “two-way data sharing” of municipal and road traffic data. According to a press release from Waycare, the collaboration will enable “cities and public agencies to communicate directly with vehicles on the road and to harness real-time in-vehicle data for advanced traffic management operations.”

Constructive protection: Forward Securities utilizes Hikvision PIR-equipped cameras to secure valuable building site materials

For one installer, Hikvision’s range of Turbo HD PIR-equipped cameras has had a dramatic impact on his business, allowing him to more efficiently monitor and secure construction sites and other valuable locations during vulnerable out of hours periods.

Paul Hookings, Managing Director of Hampshire-based security installation firm Forward Securities, had a problem. His company had built a solid reputation for, amongst a variety of other services, securing building sites, notably the important materials and equipment left overnight and unattended in the site compound.

Building site compounds, Hookings explains, can include any number of super-valuable and enticing materials for potential thieves. “Diesel, copper, tools, cabling, right down to bricks, breeze blocks, agricultural fuel, road diesel, even the metal gates,” he says. “Thousands and thousands of pounds worth of stuff is stored there overnight.”

To monitor these compounds for intruders, Forward Securities would use traditional PIRs – passive infrared detectors – to raise an alert when the compound perimeter was breached.
The problem had to do with the PIRs, Hookings explains.

“On critical sites like these, where there’s a lot of activity during working hours, people are able to move those PIRs in the daytime when they’re off,” he says. “And come night-time, they’re then able to return and rob the place without being picked up by the detectors, and then move the PIR back to where it was previously.

“Then it’s down to the security company, who end up scratching their heads, thinking: why didn’t that go off?”

As a result, Hookings was on the lookout for a solution, something which would counter that potential for tampering and provide a more effective deterrent to potential thieves. Then he noticed that Hikvision had released a new range of Turbo HD PIR cameras.

“These are lovely little products,” he said. “When Hikvision brought them out, I binned our separate PIRs. With a PIR camera, during the armed period, if someone moves into its field of view, there’s an alarm. If someone covers it up, it goes into alarm. If someone moves it into another direction, it goes into alarm. So I’ve binned the products we were using previously and now I exclusively use Hikvision.”

The Turbo HD PIR camera range uses advanced video surveillance technologies to improve alarm accuracy and prevent intrusions. Video verification of alarms means a rapid response from a manned guarding service can be achieved.

The camera’s built-in PIR detector captures infrared light given off by human bodies and distinguishes it from other visual “noise.” It can be “double knocked” with Hikvision’s Turbo HD K series DVR’s motion detection to reduce false alarms caused by moving targets without human body IR emission. This way, filtering false alarms reduces storage space and costs, and it also means more efficient post-event footage search.

The camera also produces a flashing white strobe light that serves as a warning signal to stop intruders. And the white light serves as supplemental lighting, enabling the camera to capture clear images of suspects as evidence when the alarm is triggered, even in extremely dark environments – such as the construction site compounds.

This is certainly Hookings’ experience.

“When we have an alarm triggered on one of our sites, we basically get a guaranteed guarding response,” Hookings says. “Because the combination of PIR detection and video serves as proof that the assailants are there. It’s a confirmed signal going to the monitoring station, and as a result we always get people apprehended.”

The model Forward Securities prefers to use is the DS-2CE12H0T-PIRL, a 5MP bullet PIR bullet camera referred to as the ‘PIRL’. They offer 2560 x 1944 pixel resolution, smart infrared illumination up to 20m, and Hikvision’s own ‘up the coax’ technology, which allows cameras to be controlled over a coaxial cable from the DVR and also to transmit the alarm signal to DVR. They’re also IP67-rated for external use, so they’re tough and suitable for the sorts of environments, like construction sites, where they’re most needed.

As an example of how he uses the Hikvision PIRL cameras, Hookings points to the example of one specific construction site currently being protected by Forward Securities.

“We’re securing the main compound, along with any remote sites,” he says. “We use six PIRL cameras, as well as additional 4K Hikvision cameras running analytics and thermal cameras, and they all sit on the same server, recording to a Hikvision Hybrid DVR, with alarms and images sent to our monitoring station.”

Other site setups can include an audio warning system, particularly for very high value equipment.

“That’s another place we’d use a PIRL,” Hookings says. “If someone, out of hours, walks up or even climbs the fence of the compound, the monitoring station is alerted to that by the PIRL camera, and they can immediately broadcast an audio warning, real time and live. That’s transmitted through the Hikvision DVR, to an amplifier and speakers.

“If the intruders persist despite the warning, we then get a guarding response. It’s not just big construction sites where the Turbo HD PIR cameras are effective, I do use them on other high value projects as well.”

Ultimately, the Turbo HD PIRL cameras are incredibly effective, Hookings says. “They pick up suspicious activity, including thefts and attempted thefts, three to four times a week across all of our sites. That means they’re actively helping to prevent the thefts of materials worth hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of pounds.”

SAFEST CITIES IN AMERICA (INFOGRAPHIC)

When looking for the best places to live in the US, our safety and that of our loved ones plays a huge role in the decision process. Questions such as What’s the traffic like? and Is the water okay to drink? are rarely the first ones we ask—no, the most common first question when moving to a new area is What are the crime rates? and Is the city safe to live in? In order to help with choosing your new city, we’ve compiled a list of the safest cities in America using the data available in last year’s FBI Crime in the US report.

Author: Ana Bera

TOP 10 SAFEST CITIES IN THE US INFOGRAPHIC

Now that we’ve introduced the first few safe US cities to live in and we all understand the importance of these statistics, let’s look at the rest of the 100 Safest Cities in America, based on the FBI’s 2017 report.

Violent crime and property crime rates are per 100,000 inhabitants.

City State Population Violent Crime Rate Property Crime Rate
Cincinnati Ohio 298,478 925.0 5,510.0
Cleveland Ohio 388,655 1,334.3 5,434.4
Colorado Springs Colorado 452,410 438.3 3,648.0
Columbus Ohio 860,090 546.3 3,934.3
Corpus Christi Texas 324,326 645.0 3,465.6
Dallas Texas 1,301,977 694.2 3,440.2
Denver Colorado 682,418 673.9 3,529.9
Detroit Michigan 673,225 1,759.6 4,093.6
Durham North Carolina 257,911 847.2 4,115.8
El Paso Texas 686,077 366.6 1,914.2
Fort Wayne Indiana 259,712 378.9 3,058.4
Fort Worth Texas 829,731 525.4 3,585.7
Fresno California 520,837 551.2 4,148.3
Greensboro North Carolina 285,950 597.0 3,568.5
Henderson Nevada 282,554 168.5 1,893.1
Honolulu Hawaii 999,307 243.9 3,110.7
Houston Texas 2,275,221 966.7 4,397.5
Indianapolis Indiana 863,675 1,288.0 4,790.8
Irvine California 258,198 55.8 1,498.1
Jacksonville Florida 867,258 648.3 3,673.0
Jersey City New Jersey 265,159 521.6 1,594.9
Kansas City Missouri 473,373 1,417.3 4,441.3
Laredo Texas 256,280 379.3 3,370.9
Las Vegas Nevada 1,562,134 920.7 2,995.3
Lexington Kentucky 314,077 332.4 3,949.7
Lincoln Nebraska 276,585 370.6 3,265.9
Long Beach California 476,318 580.7 3,010.0
Los Angeles California 3,962,726 634.8 2,359.6
Louisville Kentucky 680,550 631.8 4,166.0
Memphis Tennessee 657,936 1,740.1 5,630.8
Mesa Arizona 471,034 418.7 2,527.4
Miami Florida 437,969 1,021.3 4,367.4
Milwaukee Wisconsin 600,400 1,596.1 4,264.2
Minneapolis Minnesota 413,479 1,062.9 4,193.9
Mobile Alabama 250,346 610.8 4,311.6
Nashville Tennessee 658,029 1,101.0 3,805.8
New Orleans Louisiana 393,447 949.6 3,874.2
New York New York 8,537,673 585.8 1,518.7
Newark New Jersey 279,110 1,077.7 2,851.2
Oakland California 419,481 1,442.5 5,856.8
Oklahoma City Oklahoma 630,621 765.6 3,956.1
Omaha Nebraska 452,252 515.0 3,595.6
Orlando Florida 268,438 940.6 6,015.5
Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1,567,810 1,029.0 3,147.4
Phoenix Arizona 1,559,744 593.8 3,491.3
Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 306,870 706.2 3,224.5
Plano Texas 282,968 153.0 1,799.1
Portland Oregon 615,672 472.8 5,234.8
Raleigh North Carolina 428,993 392.3 3,063.0
Riverside California 323,064 446.0 3,259.7
Sacramento California 489,717 737.4 3,369.5
San Antonio Texas 1,463,586 587.2 5,029.5
San Diego California 1,400,467 398.6 2,082.0
San Francisco California 863,782 776.8 6,138.0
San Jose California 1,031,458 329.6 2,427.1
Santa Ana California 337,304 482.1 2,155.3
Seattle Washington 683,700 598.7 5,522.0
St. Louis Missouri 317,095 1,817.1 6,316.1
St. Paul Minnesota 300,721 703.3 3,282.1
St. Petersburg Florida 255,821 741.9 5,622.7
Stockton California 304,890 1,352.0 4,263.2
Tampa Florida 364,383 630.7 2,295.9
Toledo Ohio 279,552 1,128.9 4,475.0
Tucson Arizona 529,675 655.5 6,642.8
Tulsa Oklahoma 401,520 903.6 5,203.2
Virginia Beach Virginia 452,797 138.3 2,205.6
Washington District Of Columbia 672,228 1,202.6 4,516.2
Wichita Kansas 389,824 984.8 5,041.2

THE METHODOLOGY BEHIND CHOOSING THE SAFEST CITIES IN AMERICA

In order to bring you this list, we reviewed and analyzed the FBI’s crime report data, as well as the data provided by the US Census Bureau.

The FBI does not recommend using the data available for rankings, as they can lead to simplistic and incomplete analyses that may cause misleading perceptions about the actual safety of the cities listed. This is the reason why the cities are ranked alphabetically.

The data presented by the FBI should also not be used to judge the efficiency of law enforcement agencies, as there are numerous other factors impacting these US city crime rates.

Because most agencies are not required to report statistics other than murders, Wikipedia was actually a helpful resource in making this list. The data compiled on the website helped shed some light on information that is often more difficult to obtain.

HOW CAN YOU IMPROVE YOUR COMMUNITY?

For those not looking to move, there are multiple ways to improve the safety of your own community and get it on the list of the safest cities in the US.

According to the West Yorkshire Police, there are some steps that can be taken by residents, in addition to those taken by local police departments, to increase safety and reduce the crime rate in any area:

  • INCREASE THE SECURITY OF YOUR OWN HOME.

This step requires the implementation of basic safety measures, like locks on your doors and windows. Sash jammers help protect vulnerable and exposed windows and doors. Online safety is another major concern that can easily be put to rest just by using secure passwords.

Keeping packages out of plain sight and your car in a garage are both major contributors to reducing crime rates and increasing safety.

  • CONTROL THE ACCESS TO YOUR PROPERTY.

The cities with the lowest crime rate stats have managed to reach that status by their residents employing methods such as locking the doors to their homes and vehicles, as well as implementing security systems in the areas that are more prone to crime. In some instances, building a physical barrier, such as a fence, is necessary, especially for commercial sites.

Removing tall hedges and avoiding fences that are too tall can also prove to be major factors in crime prevention, as they provide a perfect cover for criminals to work unseen.

  • TAKE CARE OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD’S APPEARANCE.

When it comes to both the safest small towns in America and the biggest cities, multiple studies show that areas with graffiti, broken street lamps, and overall physical disorder have higher crime rates than the clean ones. Gathering your community together to cover up the graffiti in your neighborhood, reporting broken street lighting to the city, and cleaning up after yourself can prove to be just what your town needs in order to deter potential offenders.

  • ESTABLISH A NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH.

Some of the lowest crime rate cities actively maintain neighborhood watches or have organized groups of civilians who are devoted to preventing crime and vandalism within the neighborhood. They work together to educate residents on proper safety measures, as well as on the proper process of reporting any crimes they may witness.

Neighborhood watches should work with the local police department and should not begin operation without consulting them first. All suspicious activities should be reported to the police, and the members of the watch should not put themselves or others at risk by intervening.

There are numerous other factors that go into making the safest cities in America as safe as they are, but the ones listed above should be more than enough to start noticing a difference in your community.

CRIME 20 YEARS AGO AND NOW

According to the FBI’s official data, the number of crimes across the US has been on a slow but steady decline, ever since the end of the 1990s. Back in 1998, the number of reported violent crimes in the US was 1,533,887. In 2017, that number sat at 1,247,321, meaning that the violent crime rate, on the federal level, went down from 567.6 to 382.9 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Crime rates have been decreasing across the nation, meaning even less crime in the already safest cities in the US. This is partially due to the new technologies available to law enforcement, as well as the advancements and developments in the science that crime prevention has become.

Taking into account the fact that the number of aggravated assaults went down from nearly a million (976,583) in 1998 to just above 800,000 (810,825) in 2017, while the population of the US increased by over 50 million during the period, we can confidently say that crime rates are on a declining spiral.

WHERE IS THE SAFEST PLACE TO LIVE?

The FBI’s data shows that certain regions of the US have significantly lower property and violent crime rates than others.

The Northeast had 1,558.6 property crimes and 304.7 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants, meaning this region is the safest one in the US.

The Midwest reported 2,207.8 property crimes and 380.7 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants during 2017.

The South is where things get a bit more violent. Questions such as Which state has the lowest crime rate? are unlikely to include many of the states from this region in the list of answers.  With 2,609.9 property crimes and 423.8 violent crimes reported per 100,000 residents in 2017, the South is the second most violent region in the country.

The data provided by the FBI shows that the Western region of the US is statistically the most unsafe part of the country, as there were 2,688.6 property crimes and 423.1 violent crimes reported last year per 100,000 residents.

WHAT ARE THE SAFEST CITIES TO LIVE IN?

Avoiding cities and areas with high crime rates can prove to be a difficult task. Those choosing colleges, moving for better business opportunities, changing cities due to an increased cost of living, or escaping an already violent town can face the toughest decision of their lives when deciding on the city they want to move to.

Although there’s no such thing as a crime-free city, some parts of the US come really close to this status and therefore earn their spot on this list of the 100 safest big cities in America (meaning cities with more than 250,000 residents).

 

Securing beauty without ruining the view

With the seasonal inflow of a large amount of visitors, and revenue, popular resort cities need to make sure everyone has a great holiday, without being touched by crime. Balatonfüred, Hungary’s second most popular resort has over 1.5 million visitors (in 2016) flocking to its lake – the biggest in the country. The local police station looked to reseller WBS Systemhouse to provide a holistic surveillance solution for the city, and this was achieved by using Hikvision equipment.

Challenge
The whole area of the city needed to be covered, from the city centre to the border of the city covering the roads leading into the city and main traffic junctions, such as train and bus stations, locations preferred by tourists, walkways, entrances of beaches and bigger traffic junctions of the city. The city’s administration specifically needed to reduce the incidents of pickpocketing, shoplifting, car theft and breaking and entering.
Cameras needed to be positioned for maximum coverage, but they also needed to be placed sympathetically, to minimise any impact on the views and the beauty of the city – the reason for visitors to be there!
A particular challenge was the city’s railway station. Cameras were needed in the station lobby to ensure safety of passengers. However, the lobby was under renovation at the time, which complicated the installation. The cameras had to be fixed in a cavity covered with a suspended ceiling in a way that the casing was not affected.
The police department also needed to have a way to monitor vehicles to add to the security of the city and the safety of both residents and visitors.

Solution
WBS Systemhouse used 40 cameras around the city in strategic locations to offer maximum coverage. They chose PTZ Dome cameras (DS-2DE4220IW-DE) for their small, compact size, optimal resolution and zoom range. This meant it could provide the best pictures and range, while being unobtrusive to not spoil the beauty of the city.
The complicated installation in the station building was solved using a bracket (DS-1662ZJ) with a custom adjustment. The customer’s request was to ensure the camera’s mounting mechanism and the cabling was as ‘invisible’ as possible. This bespoke installation and the ability of the camera to deliver long range PoE power, resolved this issue to the delight of the customer.
The cameras are connected by a “closed-loop” wireless or optical fiber connection to the recording and Hikvision’s HikCentral video management platform installed in the server room of Balatonfüred Police Station. Camera images are recorded by 2 NVRs and a DVR, and the functions of the video management system are provided by iVMS 5200 (now called HikCentral) installed on a separate server. The WBS ANPR System installed on a separate server is also responsible for processing license plate data to check when vehicles entered and left the city, but also to have alarms on any ‘blacklisted’ vehicles that are picked up.
The feeds are monitored 24h at the police station in Balatonfüred, who are able to react quickly if necessary. The users find the system easy to use and flexible, thanks to the HikCentral and the fact that the cameras can easily be moved remotely.
László Regdon, Chief of Police in Balatonfüred, says: ““The area surveillance system has greatly contributed to the success of several traffic actions and criminal investigations by the police. Based on the system – which provides needle-sharp images – we have obtained useful information to provide evidence for various violations. Since the introduction of the camera system, the number of crimes has been reduced and the quality of events has been improved. The cameras in Balatonfüred fit into the atmosphere and environment of our small city, they do not create dissonance at all.”
This is a great example of how surveillance products can combine together to give an efficient, holistic system to cover a whole city. And, due to the choice of cameras, the quality of picture and the dedication of the installers, the solution quietly monitors the city and the people enjoying it without ruining the impact of the environment that attracts so many to it.

Businesses are using faces to gain security and business insights

Smartphones and social media all utilize facial recognition, and user acceptance has paved the way for more varied uses. While the technology is still mostly associated with security, government and law enforcement, businesses are taking advantage of it as well for both security and business intelligence purposes.

The overall global facial recognition market is growing, expected to reach nearly US$7.8 billion by 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.9 percent, according to a report by MarketsandMarkets. The report cites the growing need for surveillance in public spaces as a major contributor to growth.

The unique capabilities of advanced facial recognition can be applied to almost any vertical. Also, since the technology requires no physical contact or credentials that can be lost, stolen or replicated, it is an attractive solution for many different applications. Add in the insights businesses can gain from its ability to easily identify and track individuals — which could provide them with valuable data to perform advanced trend analysis, productivity research workflow processing and so much more — it is no wonder more and more businesses are deploying facial recognition solutions.

Making Businesses More Efficient With Facial Recognition

Businesses are deploying facial recognition technology to increase operational efficiency and learn more about customers.

Nowadays everyone is using facial recognition and businesses are no exception. The use of facial analytics solutions to gather information on demographics and consumer buying patterns is expected to grow significantly in the coming years, according to a report by MarketsandMarkets. Adoption of face recognition technology is growing across industries, which is being fueled by growing awareness, advancements in the technology, and accessibility. For instance, the development of advanced facial recognition analytics that are centralized has made it relatively easy to apply to any networked camera, explained Shawn Mather, Director of Sales for the U.S. at Intelligent Security Systems (ISS).

With businesses also looking for more ways to utilize smart technologies, and with artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning gaining momentum, the use cases for facial recognition have opened up. Additionally, improvements in video surveillance cameras have allowed “organizations to realize the full value of video surveillance investments,” according to Stephanie Weagle, CMO of BriefCam.

“The growing sophistication of video content analytics (VCA) systems combined with the market’s fuller understanding of the ways in which video analytics solutions can drive organiza- tional efficiency and performance alongside security, has resulted in businesses of all types taking a deeper interest in VCA and face recognition,” Weagle said. From a retail perspective, leveraging facial recognition technology allows them to better understand customer demographics (e.g., gender, age, etc.). This data provides the retailer with a better understanding of who their customers are, which could enable them to better personalize the shopping experience and tailor their marketing strategy.

“When companies educate themselves on demographic composition, they create business intelligence opportu- nities to improve convenience in how people interact with their built environ- ments and to enhance the personal- ization of experiences in advertising,” explained Dan Grimm, VP of Computer Vision and GM of SAFR at RealNetworks. Grimm explained that companies can use facial detection and charac- terization, which does not retain any biometric information, to gain actionable insights of their customers. “For example, shopping mall owners will be able to make better advertising, leasing and customer service decisions if they know that between the hours of 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. they tend to see traffic of X number of persons broken down by 60 percent female, 40 percent male, with an average age of 42, based on a single IP camera properly tuned for an entrance,” he added.

Businesses are also using facial recognition to create customer loyalty programs to help identify VIPs.

Mather also highlighted the use of facial recognition in workforce management. This is a trend he sees on the rise globally. The ability to accurately identify and track personnel for time and attendance management with facial recognition is especially being sought after. Facial recognition is being deployed for this purpose in a large number of industries where large, but often temporary workforces are being deployed to either permanent or temporary sites, he said. “Perfect examples are factories and construction sites, where shifts change based on delivery schedules and production lines, and different groups of specialized workers need to be on production lines at different intervals,” Mather explained. These are just some of the ways businesses are using facial recognition technology for nonsecurity purposes today. In the near future, many expect facial recognition to become more mainstream where its use for even more business intelligence operations will continue to grow.

How Businesses Use Facial Recognition to Enhance Security

Facial recognition is helping businesses stop thefts and keep environments more secure.

More and more businesses are using facial recognition technology to improve situational awareness. Doing so gives businesses a smarter, easier way to monitor who is entering, staying and leaving their environment, while also increasing safety, security and convenience. Doug Aley, CEO of Ever AI, noted that “mission-critical” applications form about 75 percent of the facial recognition market. This includes use cases such as security surveillance, access control, digital authentication and government and law enforcement applications. According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the increased need for enhanced surveil- lance and monitoring at public places and the increased use of the technology in industries such as the government are driving the market growth. While the main purpose of deploying a facial recognition solution is security, it is also about “empowering individuals to use their faces as a token to gain fast safe access and authen- tication,” said Dan Grimm, VP of Computer Vision and GM of SAFR at RealNetworks.

Facial recognition is “ideal” for environments that need to positively identify individuals for physical and data security clearance, general access permis- sions, compliance with mandated regulations, and financial verification, according to Shawn Mather, Director of Sales for the U.S. at Intelligent Security Systems (ISS).

In a business environment, such as retail, “this could mean leveraging footage of different shoplifting incidents, assembling a suspect watchlist using frames from video surveillance, and then responding to alerts triggered by a video content analytics (VCA) system’s detection of a biometric match for the suspected shoplifter,” explained Stephanie Weagle, CMO of BriefCam. From there, security or police officers could investigate further to determine whether the alert has correctly identified the shoplifter and, if so, apprehend the perpetrator before the store bears further losses.

Facial recognition can also be used to provide live analytics for industries where there are high numbers of unknown visitors (e.g., malls, retail spaces, event venues, stadiums, etc.). This also applies to large enterprises with high visitor flows, such as hospitals, universities and stadiums, that have a need to know when persons of interest appear on camera. Grimm used a sports stadium as an example. Stadium operators might flag banned patrons in its database, while box owners may want notifica- tions when VIPs are onsite, in order to properly greet them and provide a superior level of customer service. “To support effective ‘watchlists’ — both for threats/concerns and for VIPs — facial recognition systems must be adept at high accuracy under the real-world conditions of identifying people in live video. This means avoiding false positive matches and reliably identifying people despite variations in lighting, orientation and facial occlusions due to scarves, glasses and hats,” Grimm explained. Customers from schools, office buildings and manufacturing are also using facial recognition to provide secure access to facilities. “In these cases, facial recognition systems enhance security in ways that are superior to badges, which can be easily stolen, and also offer features that catch piggybacking instances to offer a more accurate assessment of who is entering and exiting,” Grimm explained.

Facial recognition can also enhance convenience over existing access management solutions. For example, with facial recognition users no longer have to deal with situations where badges are forgotten at home or left on a desk. Grimm added that for secure access, facial recognition solutions should include anti-spoofing to prevent unauthorized access to those attempting to use a photo to gain entry.

How Businesses Should Protect Privacy When Using Facial Recognition

As facial recognition becomes more ubiquitous, concerns about privacy are at an all-time high.

Facial recognition has been entrenched in controversy lately. San Francisco recently made headlines by becoming the first city in the U.S. to ban the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement and government agencies; however, businesses are not included in this ban.

Built-in facial recognition in smartphones has helped ease the general population’s concerns over biometrics by making it a norm. However, many civil liberties groups and consumers are still just as concerned about how enterprises are using and storing facial recognition data. The determination of privacy is often dependent on the use case. In some instances, privacy is determined by the governing entity. For example, the Global Entry program, administered by the US Department of Homeland Security, uses facial recognition to verify that the person in front of the camera is the same as the one in the passport photo. “Not only is consent and privacy in this instance ‘implied,’ but also legally mandatory,” said Doug Aley, CEO of Ever AI.

On the other hand, consumer expectations of privacy and consent are often contingent on the application. “We typically find implied consent in situations where consumers are expecting it (e.g., consumers expect that bad actors are not allowed entry into the country, and so the concept of face recognition to identify them is acceptable),” Aley explained. However, there is a delicate balance that will come down to the difference between mission-critical applications (e.g., where the government doesn’t need permission to use an individual’s face) versus general purpose face recognition for casual, entertainment-focused applications, he added.

In terms of legislation, laws regarding privacy are rapidly evolving around the world. In the U.S., states such as Illinois, Texas and Washington have specific biometric privacy laws governing the use, collection and storage of biometric data. In Europe the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) also has specific clauses mandating how biometric data can be collected, used and stored. For example, the GDPR states that EU residents must give explicit consent before their data can be collected, and that they have the right to withdraw consent at any given time — this is known as “the right to be forgotten.” Dan Grimm, VP of Computer Vision and GM of SAFR at RealNetworks, believes regulations are needed at a national level in the U.S., not just by jurisdiction. This would help to provide a baseline for how facial recognition can be deployed in ways that take into account the “important missions of our customers and the interest of the general public.”

While making sure all facial recognition deployments abide by privacy regula- tions is a given, whether in the cloud or on premises, businesses can further maintain privacy by doing their part. This should include ensuring that all data is encrypted in transit and at rest; systems are built with stringent cyber protections; providing the ability for individuals to be deleted from a system; and offering an opt-in/opt-out structure that encourages users to provide consent around the use of facial recognition. “For SAFR from RealNetworks, we find this particularly important and not only include these features out of the box, but also provide our customers with best practices for implementing facial recognition,” Grimm added.

From a consumer’s perspective, concerns surrounding facial recognition rests more in the hows (e.g., how it is being used, how it is being transmitted and how it is being stored) rather than the actual use of the technology, according to Shawn Mather, Director of Sales for the U.S. at Intelligent Security Systems (ISS). For this reason, he explained that privacy is much more an issue of application. In the future, we can expect that governments worldwide will continue to develop policies to regulate the use of biometric technologies, as well as define the rights of opting out of being tracked digitally. We may even see more cities opt to follow in the footsteps of San Francisco and ban certain applications of facial recognition technology altogether.

What’s Required for Businesses to Deploy Facial Recognition?

Getting the most out of facial recognition requires the right equipment; however, needs may vary by application.

The hardware needs of businesses wanting to deploy facial recognition can vary depending on the application. Not every situation requires the highest resolution camera or the highest computing power, nor does every every environment pose the same challenges (e.g., lighting, crowding, weather, etc.). Generally, in order to deploy a facial recognition system what is needed are a well-tuned camera, local computing power, and software. Hardware systems must be paired with the appropriate computing power to run facial recognition efficiently, which depends on whether you are managing a high- or low-density environment.

However, hardware requirements can vary greatly depending on the application and deployment architecture. For example, secure-access use cases, where you are viewing a few faces at a given time, can leverage lower-resolution cameras with lower frame rates and require less computing power (in addition to deploying fewer cameras), which effectively lowers your total cost of ownership (TCO), explained Dan Grimm, VP of Computer Vision and GM of SAFR and RealNetworks.

On the other hand, when using watchlists, deploying more cameras can improve accuracy and performance. Grimm added, “If the facial recognition platform supports a distributed architecture by doing detection at the edge and recognition in the cloud, then you’ve not only lowered TCO, you’ve also increased your ability to scale in a massive way.”

In the early days of face recognition, there was often a tradeoff between accuracy and device power. “Lower powered devices, either in terms of chipset, bandwidth requirements or camera resolution, suffered from lower accuracy,” noted Doug Aley, CEO of Ever AI. Today, Ever AI has had success in being able to deploy on everything from a single core legacy processor all the way up through a cluster of high-powered GPUs, like an NVIDIA T4. “There are now other companies like ours where the accuracy tradeoff is no longer an issue,” Aley added. Nowadays, speed is where the major variability comes in — the more powerful the hardware, the faster the speed of matching and the faster the overall user experience. Aley explained that most modern chipsets, especially from a quad-core onward, are going to be very fast. Furthermore, today’s face recognition models, and the frameworks off which these models are built, are getting more adept at handling lower-power chipsets. Shawn Mather, Director of Sales for the U.S. at Intelligent Security Systems (ISS) highlighted software integration issues over complications with hardware. Software providers, however, can overcome these challenges by making their solutions compatible with VMS solutions and electronic access control solutions. The type of facial recognition — 2D or 3D face recognition technology — a businesses chooses to deploy may also come with its own specific set of challenges and requirements. A report by MarketsandMarkets noted that captured images from earlier 2D facial recognition technology were highly dependent on illumination, meaning poor lighting significantly affected image quality. Another challenge was the “incompatibility of integration between software tools and biometric hardware devices.”

However, the report expects 3D technology to have the largest market share in the coming years. Unlike 2D technology, 3D technology is not dependent on illumination. This enables it to capture higher-quality images in uncontrolled environments, such as poorly lit or completely dark areas. Something else to consider in the years to come are facial recognition cameras, where the recognition process is done on-board at the frontend. These types of cameras, though, require strong computational power since all of the tools for recognition are on-board. While several camera companies are developing face recognition cameras, the overall market is still in a fledgling state, but may be something to look forward to in the future.

AI, Analytics Power Luxury Retail Customer Experience

The personal luxury goods market is growing, thanks to renewed interest from millennials. The retail channel of the global luxury goods market grew 4 percent in 2018, according to a report by Bain & Company. However, it still faces tough competition from wholesalers and online sales.
Izvor: a&s International
E-mail: redakcija@asadria.com

From a regional standpoint, China, Japan, Europe and the United States all saw positive market growth in 2018. Chinese consumers are leading the growth trend both domestically and abroad, with an estimated 33 percent of global luxury spend in 2018, according to Bain & Company.

Nowadays, everything is becoming digitally influenced in one way or another, and luxury sales are no exception. A report by McKinsey & Company stated that nearly 80 percent of luxury sales today were “digitally influenced,” meaning that “in their luxury shopping journeys, consumers hit one or more digital touch points.”

For luxury retailers, this means it is becoming critically important to better understand customers’ wants and needs in order to meet and exceed brand expectations. That is why luxury retail is finally starting to utilize artificial intelligence (AI), video analytics and other technologies and techniques more widely. By using such solutions, luxury retailers are now able to get a more in-depth look into what their customers want, not only improving the customer experience but also driving sales.

Luxury Brands Turn to Technology to Woo VIP Shoppers

Providing the best customer experience is one of the most important aspects of luxury retail, and retailers are turning to technology to ensure every customer feels like a VIP.

Tough competition for high-spending consumers means luxury retailers must provide VIP service at every step of the way. As Ray Hartjen, Marketing Director at RetailNext, puts it: “Shoppers don’t need to shop at any brand. Brands need to make shoppers want and feel like they need to shop a brand. Technology can help.”

Pressured by new entrants and online sales, luxury retailers are adopting fresh tools to better understand their customers. According to Andrew Fowkes, Head of Retail Center of Excellence at SAS UK and Ireland, this includes “looking at the end-to-end lifecycle of the products and services they sell — recognizing the importance and profit that can be made from ‘outlet’ business as well as full price offerings.” Hartjen pointed to the “connected journey” of high-end consumers, saying that following this from beginning to end could provide key information to retailers. “It will be important for luxury retailers to tie into and integrate seamlessly with shoppers’ connected journeys. They will need to understand how shoppers’ online experiences drive store visits, and how store visits have tangential and residual impacts later on in the brand’s digital touch points and channels. And, of course, they need to understand the key branded interactions that convert shoppers into buyers,” Hartjen explained.

“Luxury retailers are in many ways leading the retail industry’s response to shoppers’ connected journeys. Activations are regularly popping up around the globe where influencers and shoppers experience a brand and its ethos in ready-for-Instagram settings. The activations are more brand showroom than retail store, where the brand is the hero, not its products, and they allow for an almost continual sharing through shoppable social media platforms,” Hartjen said. “Luxury is investing in the shopping experience, because it’s what shoppers want and crave, and what’s good for shoppers is good for business.” Parallel to understanding the connected shopping journey is the need to understand who the shopper is. “Relevant communication and engagement is paramount to success, and in the luxury sphere, relevant means personalized,” Hartjen added. “The luxury segment needs to engage on a personal level, and to get shoppers to reveal personal information, there has to be value in it for the shopper. Those brands that do it well will have a loyal customer for life.”

While gathering consumer data can help retailers provide a personalized shopping experience, they must also comply with GDPR regulations. For instance, although video analytics and face recognition data is useful, GDPR rules require customer consent before such data can be used. But Stephanie Weagle, CMO of BriefCam, believes that should consumers opt in, luxury retailers can use data to optimize and personalize the shopping experience even further.

“Luxury retailers can create lists of VIP customers and upload images of these visitors to their video-content analytics engine. The video analytics solution can be configured to alert operators when key customers are recognized entering the store. By triggering a call to action any time a VIP customer walks into the store, sales associates can be mobilized to engage the visitor immediately and personally. When face recognition data is integrated with historic sales data, the retailer can quickly review and understand individual customer shopping trends and prefer- ences based on past purchases, and use this information to share personalized and relevant information and offers to drive sales,” Weagle said.

How Machine Learning, AI Improve the Luxury Retail Experience

Luxury retailers are utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to better understand customer needs and improve the shopping experience.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are being introduced and utilized by nearly every industry. This includes the luxury retail sector, where advanced algorithms are allowing retailers to enhance the customer experience both in-store and online. Brands such as Dior have launched AI chatbots that can interact with and make recommendations to online shoppers. Burberry’s flagship store in London meanwhile, has fully embraced the digital age with a host of interactive multimedia tools, including smart mirrors that double as screens. In-store, luxury retailers are using AI and augmented reality (AR) to provide customers with a more personalized and immersive shopping experience. An example of this is smart mirrors, which can automatically recommend accessories for a given outfit, as well as allow shoppers to make a 360-degree video and change the color of clothes.

While luxury retailers still rely on human sales associates for the time being, AI and machine learning are playing an increasingly larger role in helping brands interact with their customers. As a report by McKinsey & Company states: “Big data and machine learning are bringing authen- ticity and relevance back into the customer relationship,” by providing advanced analytics to help brands offer services uniquely tailored to each customer and occasion. According to Andrew Fowkes, Head of Retail Centre of Excellence at SAS UK and Ireland, “applying machine learning to in-store data has great potential to help luxury retailers better understand their customers through their entire lifecycle.” He added retailers were also “utilizing these techniques to better understand demand patterns, to have the high-value merchandise in the right part of the world to fulfill demand.” Fowkes said luxury retailers were deploying machine learning techniques to better understand their customers and keep them engaged with a brand. Such techniques were also used to “apply more real-time context to offers or messages they put in front of their customers, or the messages their employees can use to sell more when face-to-face with the customers.”

Ray Hartjen, Marketing Director at RetailNext, emphasized the need for accurate footfall data, noting the importance of deep-learning based sensors such as RetailNext’s Aurora v2, which can accurately distinguish between customers and reflec- tions, shadows and shopping carts piled high with merchandise. Hartjen added that advanced sensors and processes were able to determine shoppers from sales associates, providing not only accurate footfall data, but also information on how, when and where shoppers and staff interact.

“Inside the store, sensors with AI determine what shoppers are doing at displays other than dwelling within a certain geo-fenced location. For example, the sensor can determine if a shopper reaches for an item, picks it up, looks at it more closely or tries it on, returns it to the display, etc. Deep-learning based human activity recognition delivers the data that allows for retailers to modify their store layouts, displays, fixtures, product assortment, staffing models — everything really — to drive the desired outcomes they’re designing toward,” he said.

Fowkes also pointed to the use of “computer vision;” a new discipline that trains machines to interpret and understand the visual world using digital images from cameras combined with deep learning models that mimic the processes used by the human brain.

“Our most developed customers can join online browsing data, social media influence and even images deploying computer vision techniques to automatically generate attributes. These attributes can then be used to fine tune customer real-time offers or future design and development of products,” Fowkes said.

Video Analytics: Providing Business Intelligence to Luxury Retailers

While the use of video analytics in luxury retail isn’t new, advanced algorithms are making it an increasingly invaluable business tool.

Video analytics are an optimal solution for luxury retailers. Not only does it enable them to leverage existing resources to gain operational intelligence, it also empowers them with the data to personalize and optimize the in-store experience. This helps to cement brand loyalty, increase engagement and ultimately drive sales. “Whether customers are window shopping, walking through the store, interacting with products or dwelling at certain displays, video analytic data helps the retailer understand visitor behavior and tailor the experience to meet consumer demands and expectations: from understanding when to mobilize sales associates to engage customers, to how to update the store layout for optimal navigation, video business intelligence empowers retailers to cater to luxury shoppers based on qualitative, actionable data insight,” said Stephanie Weagle, CMO of BriefCam.

While in-store video surveillance still has security monitoring functions in luxury retail, now more than ever it has become an important source of data. This is due to advances in analytics, which have retailers seeking new and innovative ways to collect and utilize data, while also taking advantage of existing resources such as video. “Many retail businesses rely on video surveillance for security monitoring; however, video analytics solutions are enabling retailers to harness video for more, such as optimizing operations and performance,” Weagle said.

In order to increase video-content-analytics coverage to optimize operations, some retailers are expanding their video surveillance systems. “By measuring traffic hotspots, store navigation patterns, dwell time and product display activity, the retailer can harness video intelligence to uncover trends; A/B test advertisements, layouts and displays and increase security and efficiency throughout its stores,” Weagle explained.

Furthermore, the demographic and activity data drawn from video analytics helps retailers make intelligent merchandising, staffing and inventory decisions to optimize sales at each store. Video analytics solutions are also enabling retailers to integrate data from sources such as point-of-sale (POS) devices in order to achieve more comprehensive analytics. “Retailers might, for example, draw conclusions about staff effectiveness by evaluating information about store entries and time spent in store, staff positioning throughout the store and final sales data,” Weagle said. “The ability to analyze and visualize traffic and shopping data into dashboards and heat maps makes it easy for retailers to identify inefficiencies, test solutions to problems and achieve data-driven optimization in store.”

This data can provide important insights into questions such as: Are shoppers dwelling next to a certain display, removing items but not purchasing? Are certain areas of the store underutilized or infrequently visited?

The ability to recognize and identify objects in video was also instrumental for employee oversight, Weagle added. “Rules can be configured to trigger calls to action for certain employee activities. For instance, by adding images of employees and using face recognition capabilities, the retailer can set alerts for when employees enter the stock room or to mobilize employees to the checkout when crowds start forming by the cashier.”

Three in one. Partizan applications merge.

Partizan Security team brings to the market a revolutionary mobile application for working with video systems.

Partizan is internationally known as a manufacturer of innovative video surveillance devices for security systems. Partizan offers both professional equipment such as 4K high-resolution cameras and DVRs with SMART features, as well as ready-made kits for “household needs” in the format of Wi-Fi Kits or Cloud Robot “baby cameras.”

Such devices are becoming increasingly popular among the population as they require minimal installation time and the most basic knowledge. It is enough to connect a couple of cables, run the mobile application on the smartphone, and follow the instructions on the screen. Leave the rest to the application!

Besides, Partizan develops its own software and provides its customers with the secure Partizan Cloud service. Previously, there were three main applications for all client devices to work continuously and smoothly in this ecosystem – Partizan Device Manager, Partizan Wi-Fi KIT, and Partizan Cloud Storage.

But since 2019, the Partizan Security team decided to create and develop a single application – for all devices, for users of the iOS and Android mobile platforms, and, in the future, with support for the Partizan Cloud service. Like “three in one.” This solution is absolutely logical and convenient for users. The name of the new application has not been aired for a long time, but here it is – Partizan. Brief and clear.

Mr. Fixit
Partizan experts surprised the market again. They created a revolutionary mobile application for working with video systems. With a magnificent, intuitive interface, with a stylish dark theme, with a minimum of buttons, a convenient menu and the most useful functionality.

Partizan application can handle any task – from viewing a home camera in the cloud to monitoring a professional video surveillance system. When launching the application, the user can immediately proceed to the device addition stage. The program provides four modes for adding devices – “Network Search”, “Scan QR code”, “Wireless Connect”, and Manual Mode.

By searching the network, you can find the network identifier of the video device in the form of a MAC address. It is the MAC address of the device that is used to connect to Partizan Cloud. Using the cloud, in this case, is necessary to simplify the settings. As a result, according to the test results, the connection to the MAC address is almost instant. With a stable connection to the Internet, the average speed of starting a video stream from four cameras is only 1.5 seconds. Fast? For sure!

Scanning a QR code is even easier! Having scanned the QR code, the user enters the manual mode, but all the fields will already be filled in automatically. There is definitely something magical about it.

Of particular note is Wireless Connect. This is Partizan’s proprietary technology for setting up and connecting wireless cameras. The wizard will request a password from a Wi-Fi network in a step-by-step mode, as well as visually show and tell you how to set up a new camera for operation in semi-automatic mode. What’s interesting is that the wizard downloads the latest firmware during camera setup and helps protect it with a password. Customer safety is above all!

Working with video
Have you ever worked on a smartphone in a multi-window interface? Then you might have noticed that it is far from convenient, especially on a small screen. Partizan programmers have found an amazingly elegant solution – the user in the application can work with all video devices without leaving the main viewing screen. In ordinary applications, it takes a lot of time to reconnect to different cameras. Here, to switch to another device, it is enough to swipe left or right in the video area. One swipe to the left – and you have switched to another recorder or camera.

Another “highlight” is that in the viewing mode, all the controls are “at fingertips”. You can take a photo, record a video, control the PTZ rotary mechanism of the camera, adjust the volume, enable two-way communication, pause, fast-forward the archive, switch to HD mode, change the scale and return to live video.

Another unique feature is the transition to archive mode. In Partizan application, this can be done with just one move. Scroll the timeline to the right – and instantly move from viewing a live video to the archive. Scroll to the opposite direction – and watch a live video. If you had experience with other applications, you will appreciate the simplicity and effectiveness of such a solution! Navigating through the archive is also very simple. At the same time, the scale is solid and so flexible that it is a pleasure to use it.

To put in a nutshell
So, in the Partizan application, the owner of the mobile device uses only two windows: list of devices and working with video. Fewer windows make the application simpler and easier to work with. Detailed hints and wizards for adding devices will not let you make a mistake even if you are a beginner. Also, access to a secure corporate cloud eliminates long and tedious fuss in the settings of the router, providing fast and high-quality service. And there’s more! Soon, the Partizan application will support the full range of brand equipment, as well as receive integration with the Partizan Cloud service.

Slovenian Manufacturer Installs Advanced at State-of-the-Art Head Office

Advanced, a global leader in the design, manufacture and supply of intelligent fire systems, has been specified in the Head Office of a leading European manufacturer.

With more than 200 employees, Slovenia-based manufacturer, Pirnar, export their luxury, high-specification doors across the globe for installation in residential and commercial premises. The manufacturer is synonymous with quality in the window and door industry and its high-end entrance-ways have won awards for their significant design and technological innovations.

Situated in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana, Pirnar’s 47,000 sq ft, state-of-the-art facility houses storage, service and training rooms in the basement, production and sales on the ground floor and offices on the upper floor. At the centre of the building’s active fire protection is an Advanced Axis EN fire system linked to 230 devices.

The industry-leading Axis EN system, which was recently certified by FM Approvals to the EN54 standard, communicates with the site’s BMS, third party CO detection system, Access Control system and third-party Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system for the purposes of smoke control, enabling the fire services to operate smoke vents, fans and dampers in cases of emergency.

Responsible for the design, installation and commissioning of the fire system was Advanced partner Bildos d.o.o., Mr. Damjan Birk, managing partner at Bildos Ltd, said: “With Pirnar’s reputation for quality and perfection we knew that only the best would be good enough. It’s for these reasons that Advanced was specified to protect their head office. The robust Axis EN system is easy to service and is backed up by award-winning technical support, making Advanced the right product for Pirnar’s Headquarters.”

“Advanced Electronics fire protection system has given us an increased feeling of safety and control, it adds confidence in how we’re running our business. We can keep growing and moving forward knowing our infrastructure protection is state of the art and constantly up to date”, Pirnar assistant director Ado Rupnik said.

“It was a pleasure to work with Bildos Ltd to supply them with a high performance, ease-to-use system that would effectively protect Pirnar’s site against fire, where production and commercial activity run side-by-side”, Advanced’s regional sales manager for southern Europe, Vladimir Zrnic, added.

Axis EN is EN54 parts 2,4 and 13 approved and its panels can be used in single loop, single panel format or easily configured into high speed, multi-loop panels in 200 node networks covering huge areas. Advanced’s legendary ease of installation and configuration and wide peripheral range make it customisable to almost any application.

Owned by FTSE 100 company Halma PLC, Advanced have a long history of protecting high-profile manufacturing sites around the World including Rolls Royce’s aerospace facility and global manufacturer of pressure relief products Elfab’s manufacturing facility.

Advanced is a world leader in the development and manufacture of intelligent fire systems. The legendary performance, quality and ease-of-use of its products sees Advanced specified in locations all over the world, from single panel installations to large multi-site networks. Advanced’s products include complete fire detection systems, multi-protocol fire panels, extinguishing control, fire paging and false alarm management systems. More details can be found on the website at www.advancedco.com

How technology is helping to beef up security at events

Terrorist groups continue to target mass gatherings, but technological innovations such as high-definition video, facial recognition and AI are allowing security personnel to better handle such threats. These new technologies can help to identify suspicious individuals and other anomalies in real time as well as for post-event investigation. Sensors mounted at entry points and event perimeters can detect attempted intrusions and hazardous materials. Information from these sensors can then be passed to a command center or to security personnel on the ground for a prompt response.
Izvor: a&s International
E-mail: redakcija@asadria.com
Kategorije za web: Man guarding, Video surveillance, Software, Perimeter Protection

Machine Learning Enhances Video Surveillance at Outdoor Events

Video surveillance plays a critical security role at large outdoor events. Advances in AI and machine learning can offer enhanced tools for spotting potential threats.

Facial and behavior recognition technologies are improving video analytics, providing invaluable new tools to security professionals. Stephanie Weagle, CMO of BriefCam, a company that specializes in using cameras and video analytics for security, said video- analysis technology could be trained to recognize “signs of problematic behavior,” as well as keep an eye on unauthorized entry, exceedingly high foot traffic or loitering.

Such video technology can be integrated with other services to trigger follow-on actions after potential threats are detected. Proactive alerting, triggering calls to action in response to suspicious or unusual behavior, can enhance the overall efficiency of a security team. Advanced video surveillance tools increased “situational awareness,” Weagle said. By mounting cameras with behavioral-recognition technology in various locations, security personnel can have a better grasp of what’s going on in the area. Weagle added that the continuous, ongoing surveillance provided by cameras also minimized the risk of “human error and distraction.”

Facial recognition played a critical role in video analytics, and prolif- eration of better-quality cameras and advances in video analytics had helped to improve the accuracy of facial recognition, Weagle said.

One such advance is the ability to store photos of suspects or past offenders on a video-analytics engine and alert security personnel when such individuals are spotted by a camera. Security personnel can then be dispatched quickly to deal with the potential threat. Weagle noted facial recognition technology could not only be used to identify criminal suspects but also VIP guests, “to ensure important visitors are being properly engaged and ushered around as needed.”

As facial recognition is still relatively new and not yet widely adopted, countries have different policies and rules on the technology’s use. Nonetheless, event organizers should consider “how the technology can be used in ways that ensure fairness, transparency, accountability and privacy compliance, while maximizing public safety,” Weagle said. Data collected by video sensors could also help to “map out activity trends and discover insights” to improve security readiness and response, she added. One challenge facing event organizers is vehicle and crowd congestion creating bottlenecks at entry and exit points. Video analytics could address this problem by collecting traffic flow data, before coming up with optimized pedestrian or vehicle navigation routes to ease the traffic. This would improve the guest experience and enhance security, Weagle said. She added it would also enable “evacuation and security dispatch routes to accelerate emergency responses” to be planned in advance.

“This information can also be used to understand staffing requirements, ensuring that crowds are guided through the event, queues and bottle- necks are prevented and employees are upholding safety regulations,” Weagle said.

How Advanced Video Surveillance Can Combat Terrorist Threats

Terrorist attacks on large crowds are a reality security professionals need to be prepared for. Deep learning-based video surveillance technology can help counter these types of threats.

Advanced surveillance camera technology can be used to investigate suspicious behavior and prevent terrorist attacks on public places. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security lists some out-of-place scenes that security cameras should be set to identify: vehicles parked near areas with high pedestrian traffic, individuals wearing unseasonably bulky clothes and individuals attempting to enter restricted areas or entrances as patrons are leaving.

After receiving a bomb threat, the standard security practice is to initiate a search of the entire event space to locate the potential explosive device. If a suspicious package is detected, event operators can use camera footage to determine if the package has been deliberately placed or is merely unattended.

Security professionals are realizing the importance of advanced video surveillance. IHS Markit figures show global shipments of network camera reached 108 million in 2018. IHS Markit estimates sales will go beyond 120 million in 2019 and 140 million in 2020. The share of high-megapixel cameras is expected to increase as well. “As the number of camera shipments increases, a better way of analyzing and assessing the captured video is needed,” said Oliver Philippou, Research Manager at IHS, in a report.

As conventional methods fall short of enabling the needed analysis, deep learning — which mimics the human brain to learn from and understand the world through a hierarchy of concepts — offers a potential solution.

Deep learning allows security personnel to intelligently search through large amounts of recorded video for a crucial piece of information that may be contained in only a few frames. “In a police investigation, this has the potential to save hundreds of hours of officers’ time. Searchable analytics are therefore penetrating markets such as city surveillance, which historically searched video manually,” IHS’ Philippou said.

BriefCam is one such company using deep learning to provide enhanced video analytics. BriefCam’s video technology can distinguish between people and objects on the basis of different factors. “Security personnel must be able to quickly review and understand incidents that have occurred and rapidly locate suspects and perpetrators,” said Stephanie Weagle, CMO of BriefCam.

The company offered robust video analytics, allowing security personnel to “rapidly review video across multiple cameras and pinpoint people and vehicles,” Weagle said. Security personnel can search suspects in the footage based on attributes like gender, clothing and direction and speed of walking. With the help of deep neural networks and computer vision technologies, moving objects, like someone riding a bicycle, can also be separated and tracked.

Sensors Critical to Perimeter Security for Outdoor Events

The first security step for organizers of outdoor events is the establishment of a clear perimeter. Common physical barriers for this purpose include bollards, blockers and fences. However, they don’t provide intrusion monitoring and detection capabilities. To meet this requirement, a sophisticated perimeter intrusion detection (PID) system is needed.

A robust PID system should meet the three Ds of protection: defend, detect and deter. Richard Huison, Regional Manager for Gallagher Security (Europe), notes not all systems meet these standards. “A physical fence offers defence and deterrent, but no detection. Video with complex analytics are great at detecting, but do not provide any deterrent,” he said. Gallagher recently partnered with CLD Fencing Systems to launch a monitored pulse fencing (MPF) solution called FenceSafe-E. MPF delivers controlled electronic pulses that last a millisecond, ideally enough to deter intruders from making a second attempt at breaching a perimeter. FenceSafe actively monitors attempted break-ins and deters potential intrusion with warning signs every 10 meters. Tension detectors trigger an alarm that sends a notification to the smartphones of security personnel. The system also briefed security personnel on “precisely what threat they will encounter,” Huison said.

During the 2018 NFL draft at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington Texas, chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive detectors were hidden in the entryways to the stadium. They sent smartphone notifications to those in the command center and security personnel on the ground if hazardous materials were detected. This same technology is also being used at border crossings and ports. Light detecting and ranging (LiDAR) sensors can similarly aid security. LiDAR is a remote sensing technology that uses laser pulses originally designed to create 3D models or maps to track the movement of people and objects. “Retailers can track customer’s behaviour with LiDAR, following their route through the shop, and monitoring hand height and direction, so they learn exactly what customers pick up and put down,” Huison said.

He added event organisers could use this technology for “counting people, studying and controlling traffic flows, queueing and pinch points and making real-time decisions to stick within Health & Safety Executive licence-limited numbers in specific zones or areas.” A perimeter control system works best when the full spectrum of inputs, including cameras, sensors, LiDAR, biometrics data, etc., are centralized within a single command. Ideally, “all sensors, systems and metrics are controlled and managed centrally” and images and instructions are relayed to patrol personnel to enable “smart, proactive and efficient” protection, Huison said. According to reports, the Super Bowl used this approach in 2018, with computer vision taking center stage. Data was collected from multiple sources and aggregated for processing, providing real-time information on what was happening in and around the stadium.

Deploying various types of sensors for perimeter security allows security personnel to promptly respond to anomalies through mobile alerts. By displaying aggregated security data on a command center, professionals can also proactively evaluate what is going on at the event in real-time and coordinate a suitable response.

Recommended Practices for Preventing Terrorist Attacks

As extremists show more interest in “soft targets,” organizers of large outdoor events at temporary venues need security that can be rapidly assembled.

Mobile surveillance cameras are preferred to more permanent CCTV cameras at temporary sites. Mobile surveillance cameras not only help to secure outdoor events, but also enable employee oversight, visitor traffic optimization and demographic analysis of visitors.

The FenceSafe-E by Gallagher and CLD Fencing Systems uses pre-assembled modular units for speedier setup. “Fence lines of over 30 meters with 45-degree corners, ends and 90-degree returns were erected and commissioned with full pulse fencing within 90 minutes,” said Kevin Godfrey, Strategic Business Development Manager at Gallagher Security, in a press release. Given the large footprint of outdoor events, Richard Huison, Regional Manager for Gallagher Security (Europe), suggests “limiting the most secure and costly solutions to smaller ‘priority zones’, such as VIP areas or generator compounds.”

A security team should allocate resources in order to ensure the physical safety of patrons, as well as secure valuable assets and the event’s brand reputation. Besides standard security hardware, e-ticketing provides another line of defence. Huison said e-ticketing not only reduced the risk of forgeries and unauthorized reselling, but also helped to spot watched individuals, known troublemakers and other security risks in advance.

Thanks to the growing use of mobile payment methods such as ApplePay, it is now possible for organizers to hold ticketless and cashless events. Secure QR codes allow organizers to establish what Huison calls as a “virtual electronic perimeter” within which mobile credentials serve to provide security. When working with third-party security staff, it is recommended that company staff report all suspicious behaviour to the main security contractor and avoid engaging in security related actions themselves. The First Responder’s Toolbox, published by the U.S.’s Joint Counterterrorism Assessment Team (JCAT), suggests that “regardless of the event size, venue, or location, continuous and ongoing efforts to improve interagency coordination and information sharing with event stakeholders will enhance security and improve emergency response.”

Security personnel should maintain constant communication with one another, either through the use of walkie-talkies or other means, so that they can stay informed with the latest development without leaving their area of duty.

According to JCAT, “to prepare for any potential terrorist attack against open-access events and mass gatherings, organizers and security officials are encouraged to establish partnerships with first responders and private sector stakeholders in advance. This will enhance information sharing, coordination, and potential emergency response concerns.”

Hikvision ColorVu Cameras – Capture Vivid Chromatic Images in Darkness

Around 11 p.m., police got an emergency call and rushed to the scene. An assault had happened in a park. According to the victim, the attacker looked like a beggar in ragged clothes and smelling of alcohol. The victim was heading home from the park at the time of the incident, when the attacker suddenly ran out of nowhere and attacked her, took her purse, and fled. The police investigated the scene but found no useful information about the attacker. Because it happened at night, the security cameras in the neighbourhood could not effectively record any usable footage. When reviewing the surveillance video, the image was blurry and full of visual noise, which is bad for detection.

Neighbourhood parks should be a peaceful place where you can take a break from the hustle and noise of the city. However, an urban park at night is often synonymous with danger. At night, passersby have to be vigilant to stay safe. Although security camera systems are becoming more commonplace in urban parks in recent years, there are still many security requirements that cannot yet be met, such as high-resolution night vision and recording in colour.

Today, to effectively solve this problem, cameras equipped with Hikvision ColorVu Technology extend and enhance surveillance capabilities into the dark, lifting the cover of night to capture vivid chromatic images – leading to the prosecution of criminals like the one described above and ultimately enhancing safety.

As a video surveillance manufacturer, Hikvision has long developed products equipped with innovative new features based on video surveillance technologies that have been refined and improved over previous decades.

Hikvision ColorVu Cameras’ powerful ability to capture details in low lighting comes from two specific breakthroughs in hardware technologies: advanced lenses and high-sensitivity sensors. In contrast to conventional lenses, ColorVu lenses are equipped with a super-aperture, reaching up to F1.0, which allows more light to enter the lens so that imaging brightness can be increased.

Hikvision ColorVu Camera lenses also feature Broad-Band Anti-Reflection (BBAR) Coating and Extra-Low Dispersion (ED) Optical glass, to reduce light flare and efficiently reproduce an image’s sharpness and colour saturation. These technologies effectively overcome the kind of key information that gets blocked by a light flare.

The ColorVu Cameras’ high-sensitivity is designed for surveillance applications where high resolution colour images are required even in ultra-low light environments. Hikvision ColorVu Cameras sensors demonstrate an extraordinary photovoltaic conversion efficiency. They employ an advanced sensor technology – a new light-collection structure that vastly improves the utilisation of light. Tests show ColorVu cameras continually provide colourful, sharp images right down to the lowest light levels. At the same time, their self-adapting 3D DNR algorithm on ISP guarantees high imaging quality.

In addition, extreme light conditions are taken into consideration in the design process. ColorVu cameras are equipped with warm supplemental light, so when there is no light source whatsoever – even starlight or street lights – they can guarantee colourful imaging. This feature provides environmentally friendly, soft, warm lighting, reducing any harsh discolouration of the object being illuminated.

As a result, Hikvision ColorVu Cameras provide bright colour video images 24/7 in low illumination conditions. They excel at capturing vivid chromatic images in a multitude of application scenarios, such as public places with no lighting, night security at industrial parks, traffic intersections in low light environments, and many more – everywhere colour information is particularly important.

As an example, in general, license plate information of a suspect’s vehicle is crucial in traffic accident investigation. However, when the vehicle is non-licensed or the licence plate is deliberately obscured, the vehicle can only be investigated by its features – brand, model, and especially the colour. So, though external lighting conditions are poor, even completely dark, Hikvision ColorVu Cameras still capture valuable colour information.

Hikvision ColorVu Technology is being used in the Turbo HD 5.0 and Easy IP 4.0 series. More details can be found in the link or on the official Hikvision website.

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