As the general population heads back to school and corporate campuses this fall, there will be new challenges related to securing facilities while ensuring health mandates and precautions are in place. While many COVID-19 restrictions have been eased, the threat of possible new surges stemming from the Delta variant have increased the tensions of school administrators. Add to the pandemic malaise the fear of mounting mental stress resulting from more than a year of campus lockdowns and remote learning and working, 2021-22 may be anything but normal.

However, campuses across the education and corporate spectrum looking to make new security investment to ensure health safety and security need to be both cost conscious and thorough when procuring new system technologies. Strategic investments should seek technology that is highly intelligent with proactive software that can help prevent incidents. Another key element for most integrated solutions is the requirement for scalability, so as new health safety and security considerations emerge, new systems have the capacity to expand and evolve. This has campus management clamoring for access control or video surveillance solutions that are smart enough to meet future threats, and security professionals looking for new solutions that are AI-driven to meet new and emerging challenges.

Advanced data-driven analytics are now foundational to most security systems, from access control and perimeter sensors to video surveillance. The capabilities of today’s smart video surveillance systems are more robust than ever because of AI-based software and analytics, the best of which can be easily added to existing infrastructure to supplement these capital investments.

Technology partnerships between companies like Intel and ISS are increasingly more critical to driving advanced solutions in video surveillance that benefit campus security projects and existing video and access systems. Empowered by Intel’s advanced artificial neural network technologies and supporting IT products, the ISS advanced suite of intelligent video analytics provide a host of new health safety and security advantages that can help better protect campus facilities from both seen and now unseen vulnerabilities.

Using data captured by Intel-based smart cameras and algorithms developed via Intel’s OpenVINO toolkit, trained deep-neural networks now have the inferencing capabilities to analyze and identify faces. For example, facilities equipped with ISS FaceX facial recognition can alert trained security administrators when datasets match a face of a person of interest. This advanced software allows functionality to go beyond simple facial recognition and alerts.  FaceX facial recognition is a powerful workforce management tool that can also be used for functions as simple as time and attendance to using facial recognition as a credential (face as a credential) for both physical and cyber access control applications using existing video surveillance and access control systems. 

In addition to facial recognition analytics, there are several other intelligent analytics solutions that can be integrated into new system plans. Intelligent pedestrian lighting solutions like ISS’s SecurOS™ Soffit system is ideal for education and corporate campus environments. This recently released analytic solution employs video analytics detectors based on artificial intelligence technologies using cameras that are built on an Intel platform that help prevent pedestrians from being struck on unlit or dark crosswalks. The driver’s attention is directed to the pedestrian as the dynamic illumination escorts them the length of the pedestrian crossing. The dynamic illumination significantly increases the speed of drivers’ visual-motor response, so they have the ability to brake in time to avoid accidents.

Sophisticated SecurOS™ Auto License Plate Recognition (LPR/ALPR) from ISS is yet another software innovation that has gained momentum on campuses because of its ability to detect and track license plate data from a distance and from vehicles traveling at high speeds. More advanced LPR/ALPR solutions like that from ISS include the to accurately capture license plate information at vehicle speeds up to 155 mph in all kinds of weather conditions.

Another critical layer of security that’s required at campuses involves the visual inspection of all types of vehicles. However, the ability to inspect the undercarriages of vehicles is typically an expensive personnel-intensive task.  ISS’ SecurOS™ Under Vehicle Surveillance System (UVSS) provides a highly accurate and cost-efficient way to automatically screen vehicles as they enter campus grounds without impeding traffic flow. The system’s unique combination of imaging hardware and intelligent analytics captures images of a vehicle’s entire underbody and analyzes the image data to detect anomalies such as explosives or contraband that may be on the vehicle.

Now that most schools and business campuses have been given the greenlight to resume in-person operations, it is most important that security personnel have the ability to react quickly to threats as they are evolving in real time so they can prevent or at least diminish negative outcomes. New AI-driven analytics hold the key to creating campus environments with higher levels of health safety and security.

Please feel free to contact me with questions or any of ISS’ global analytics specialists to see how we can help better protect your campus.