Some estimates put more than 30 million surveillance cameras in the United States, shooting four billion hours of footage weekly. Video surveillance has grown into a $160 billion global industry, especially after the U.S. government began investing in the technology to boost homeland security efforts in the wake of 9/11.
Numerous cities have installed cameras in various locations -- many increasingly connected with wireless technologies, with traffic lights only the beginning. New York City, with help from a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant, created a network of thousands of cameras citywide, including subway stations, traffic signals and private businesses. The city's police department operates its own network of 3,000 cameras. Chicago also received DHS funds and built a "Homeland Security Grid" of 2,250 cameras, with plans to add more in the future. Baltimore and New Orleans have also deployed thousands of surveillance cameras.
Municipalities with Wi-Fi networks can often utilize the infrastructure to greatly reduce the cost of deploying video cameras across a city. Emerging mobile video capabilities will play a pertinent role for police and emergency responders, and there is little doubt that the number of video cameras will increase dramatically in the next decade.
Staffing the feeds from thousands of cameras would be a budgetary and logistical nightmare, but with video analytics software that tracks potential problems and monitors areas for preset situations, the problem may be solved.
Video analytics is a software system at the forefront of security technology that helps minimize the need for human viewers to distinguish important events from video feeds. Video analytics software tracks video monitor feeds and pinpoints images that fit specified criteria. When the software identifies predetermined criteria, such as a loiterer, a bag left at the airport or a car in a restricted area, it alerts appropriate security personnel.
"Traditional video services are very reactive, and you have to pay attention to cameras and try to make sense of what's going on," said Dilip Sarangan, research analyst for Frost and Sullivan. "With video analytics, the software uses mathematical algorithms that actually sift through all the videos and trigger alerts if something goes wrong." The software groups video pixels into objects, uploads them into a computer database and compares them against predetermined behavioral and motion parameters. If a preset object or motion parameter is detected, an alarm is triggered.
Security systems benefit the most from the emerging technology. Federal and state governments are currently the largest users of video analytics, taking up more than half of the market share, according to Video Analytics: The Ground Reality, a report by Frost and Sullivan. The DHS uses the technology and has offered grants to state and local authorities to purchase and deploy video surveillance systems for homeland security applications. Under homeland security, video analytics software is mainly used to monitor security at airports, shipping ports and borders.
Major video analytics users also include border protection officers, who use the software to detect breaches or spot people in border areas, according to March Networks, a video analytics software provider. Critical facilities such as nuclear power plants, military installations and telecommunications hubs have a higher level of protection through video surveillance.
Video analytics also assist in all aspects of transportation safety, including security at airports, highways, and bus and train services. The software can identify and send alerts for suspicious bags and packages, people accessing restricted areas, the size of a crowd and abandoned vehicles. The technology can count people and vehicles in an area at a given time, and identify safety hazards.
According to Frost and Sullivan, the retail, banking and gaming industries constitute the second-largest market for video analytics software. Banks use video analytics for security at ATMs and inside lobbies, while casinos use the software for security and gaming trends analysis.
Retail companies use video analytics to alert security staff to suspicious transactions such as check authorizations with no manager present. Also, security can be alerted to suspicious loitering and unauthorized access to storage areas. Another feature retail businesses take advantage of is the ability to detect and program shoplifting patterns, with video analytics serving as a type of search engine to filter through tape data to find shoplifting evidence. Store managers can monitor cash register lines and store traffic, while marketing specialists can obtain statistics.
Corporate campuses and factories also benefit from additional video intelligence, by being alerted to unusual after-hours activity, trespassing and vehicles in prohibited areas.
While video analytics is a relatively new and promising technology, it is expected to be further developed in the coming years. Government organizations have been particularly interested in the software's ability to recognize license plates and faces, Sarangan said, adding that though video analytics software performs well in a controlled environment -- when a picture is clear -- it can be unreliable in a natural setting.
"The idea is a car drives by a school and a camera catches the license plate, which is sent to a DMV [department of motor vehicles] database and we know exactly where they are," Sarangan said. "In a very controlled environment it works, but in high speeds, it depends on the angle and how the picture is taken."
Video analytics software can also falter when tracking video images in constant motion. Another impediment to the widespread use of video analytics technology is the cost of digital camera system upgrades, since only high-quality cameras and lenses will provide adequate video stream for accurate video analytics results. And with the additional costs of software and computers, many organizations have yet to invest in the new technology.
Many security and video monitoring companies feel these problems will be resolved soon. General Electric (GE) invested heavily in the global security industry and has researchers creating video surveillance systems that can detect explosives by the electromagnetic waves they emit. GE is also developing programs to identify distress in a crowd by honing in on erratic body movements.
The first entirely geospatial video surveillance system-- GView -- was recently released by Guardian Solutions. The GView technology plugs digital video recording surveillance into Google Earth to create a three-dimensional situation awareness system to rapidly detect threats. As the camera records events, GView isolates and tracks threats, which can be an individual, vehicle or vessel, and uses Google Earth to display all movements three-dimensionally.
IBM is developing the "IBM smart surveillance system," which promises not only to automatically monitor a scene, but also to manage the surveillance data, perform event-based retrieval, receive real-time alerts through standard Web infrastructure and extract long-term statistical activity patterns.
Technology often outpaces society, and video analytics promises to be a big part of security as society catches up. As the number of video security systems grows, the need for computer video analysis also will expand. By 2012 it's expected that retail, banking, gaming, corporate facilities and transportation industries will take over the majority of the video analytics technology market. If that time comes, a collective Big Brother made up of many Little Brothers will indeed monitor our every activity. But if it helps to keep us safer, it seems people for the most part won't mind.
