By Bill Brennan
President, Panasonic i-PRO

Trends, Topics and Technologies

Let’s Get Physical…and More Proactive

There’s a significant difference between threat detection and prevention when discussing the evolution of physical security system solutions. The former being purely reactionary in terms of incident response and forensics, and the latter being proactive with the intent of thwarting events before they occur. These classifications represent two very distinct security objectives that both have respective roles for specific verticals and applications.

Today’s more advanced integrated security systems do an excellent job of providing situational awareness for just about any traditional threat detection application. Systems are smarter, faster and much more versatile in terms of how and where they can be deployed with very high levels of effectiveness and efficiency. But there is an increasing demand for these systems to deliver more in terms of their ability to proactively prevent bad things from happening. It’s a tall order, but surely a reasonable expectation given the power of emerging technologies and application-driven solutions.

Much of the new intelligence is clearly attributable to advancements in software that reside on continually evolving hardware platforms. It’s a symbiotic relationship that needs to be present to fuel this evolution in smart systems technology that is built on AI-driven products and system management platforms.

Today’s AI-enabled physical security systems provide new levels of predictive analysis by leveraging the large amounts of data across a wide range of security and business intelligence applications. By empowering systems to detect anomalies in system activity, human or machine behaviors, they can alert users of possible threats.

This proactive approach in analyzing and applying data expands the utility of intelligent physical security systems to help manage and solve a greater range of longstanding and emerging challenges.

During the past year alone, the development of new physical security system technologies with predictive analysis capabilities were greatly accelerated to help proactively combat the spread of infection. For example, AI-powered facial recognition analytics were enhanced to recognize and authenticate the identity of individuals even with partially covered faces at obscure camera angles. In addition, the technologies are capable of detecting when a person has aged or altered their physical appearance. Non-mask detection was also implemented in helping organizations and businesses where masks are required to maintain compliance and sustain health-safety protocols. AI-enhanced video surveillance can also automatically detect and identify people with elevated body temperatures. All of these features and capabilities are proactive in nature and, in this case, geared for relatively new health-safety and compliance applications.

Many intelligent features that are more specifically aligned for security applications work by detecting anomalies that may present an evolving situation or potential threat. One approach is through the application of intelligent video motion detection that automatically detects a multitude of things: loitering, movement direction, an individual crossing a predetermined line, a suspicious object left behind, or a scene change resulting from camera movement. Additionally, with a heightened emphasis on personal privacy, new redaction capabilities have been developed to conceal innocent bystanders’ faces in video footage being used to apprehend suspects or as evidence.

A high level of security and business intelligence is possible when intelligent sensor technologies are integrated with AI-powered video surveillance edge devices like cameras. Sensors such as audio analytics that detect screams, gunshots, glass breakage and explosions, as well as environmental sensors that detect noxious fumes and gasses, smoke, vibrations from explosions or earthquakes and more, work together on open-platform integrated systems to provide expanded situational awareness.

Proactive physical security solutions deliver intelligent capabilities that surpass traditional reactive capabilities, increase overall safety and security and deliver a new source of business intelligence. Although there will always remain a need for conventional real-time monitoring and forensics applications, intelligent system technologies will continue to move the industry toward more proactive applications and new business opportunities.