10.11.24 – Campus Safety
Video surveillance is a powerful tool in the immediate aftermath of an incident on campus, providing critical insights and aiding in swift resolution. However, there’s a real opportunity for schools to use their video solutions proactively.
Video surveillance is a powerful tool in the immediate aftermath of an incident on campus, providing critical insights and aiding in swift resolution. However, there’s a real opportunity for schools to use their video solutions proactively.
Powerful new tools are available for campuses to quickly identify signs of trouble and alert the appropriate authorities while protecting the privacy of students and staff members. For example, crowd estimation analytics can detect when a large number of students are gathering in unexpected places or at unusual times. Analytics may help detect a bag left unattended for a long time.
When you combine powerful video analytics with a decision management system, you can take a more proactive approach to risk detection. The earlier you identify a potential problem, the more time you have to respond.
With today’s unified systems, video surveillance system footage can be analyzed, shared, and combined with other data in real time. The ability to share this kind of real-time information with law enforcement and other first responders can also greatly improve their ability to respond quickly and effectively in an emergency.
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Overwhelmed with Lots of Security Cameras? Analytics Can Help
Video surveillance can provide important evidence when investigating on-campus conflicts, vandalism, or suspicious activity after hours. Yet adding more cameras isn’t always the best solution. Watching hours of video or searching through archival footage is time-consuming and may not be possible if other tasks take precedence.
With forensic search analytics, searching through video footage takes less time. Security operators can search for objects, locations, or even certain kinds of actions or movements, such as people or vehicles moving in a certain direction.
Security teams can focus on other tasks while analytics work in the background to identify potential signs of trouble. Operators are alerted if something suspicious is detected. They can review the related data from sensors and video footage to determine whether intervention is necessary.
Other Systems Can Fill In Video Surveillance Gaps
Monitoring private spaces such as restrooms is another tricky situation. Cameras are obviously not appropriate in these places, and students are aware of this opportunity to avoid detection. School staff have a responsibility to monitor and intervene in situations involving substance abuse, vaping, smoking, fighting, bullying, destruction of school property, or other risks.
Video analytics and data from other kinds of devices can help solve some of these camera conundrums. Some schools have found that adding other kinds of sensors, such as vape detection devices or sound detectors programmed to identify keywords such as “help” can help close some of these security gaps.
When combined with a decision management system, these solutions decrease response times. Your team receives automatic alerts about suspicious activity on campus and step-by-step guidance on which actions to take.
You can also trigger geo-located incidents from a mobile application to alert the security team immediately to a specific location. Or a unified security system can be programmed to alert police and initiate a lockdown if a firearm is detected by video analytics. In such a situation, being a few seconds faster to lock a door or call for help is crucial.
Student and Employee Privacy Must Be Built Into Technology
Modern security systems gather a lot of data. To protect individual privacy and maintain compliance with evolving privacy laws, schools must ensure that personally identifiable information is secure.
The gold standard is to choose a vendor who has embraced a “privacy by design” approach, which makes protecting privacy the default setting. Software designed with this approach pixelates or redacts the identities of all individuals captured on video surveillance. Only authorized people can remove the privacy protection filter, and only the faces of the selected persons of interest are revealed.
For example, if there are 20 kids in a hallway and two of them are fighting, your video management system should make it easy for you to reveal only the faces of the two students involved in the fight. The privacy of the 18 bystanders isn’t compromised. Some legacy technology requires you to select faces one by one to add the privacy protection feature, but newer software does the opposite. To speed up the process, you select only the faces you want to reveal.
Deploying video analytics with privacy in mind can help reduce privacy concerns in schools. This involves implementing video analytics with full transparency along with having well-defined business objectives and policies around how data is collected, stored, and used. Both parents and students should be fully informed about the campus’ purpose of having video analytics and all the data policies surrounding them.
Texas School District Implements a Comprehensive Approach
In communities that have invested in their school systems to upgrade building security over the years, a common challenge is a lack of standardization across schools and facilities. When different campuses and departments use different tools, it increases the time required to gather evidence during investigations and makes it more difficult to get a clear picture of trends across the district. This can create security gaps.
In the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District (CFBISD) recognized the limitations of the old, disjointed approach to security. When the district chose to upgrade, the team looked for a unified security solution to better protect its 25,000 students. A key determining factor when selecting new partners was the ability to manage and maintain all systems from a single intuitive platform.
Their unified system now allows schools to view and control video, audio, intercom, access control, and other security features within the same interface. School security teams quickly investigate any situation across most campuses, administrative buildings, sports stadiums, transportation depots, service centers, and other facilities.
From one platform, security officers can view and analyze data from cameras, door readers, intrusion sensors, and video intercoms. All the doors and intrusion points are linked to video, so if an alarm is triggered it’s easy for security teams to pull up related video footage with just a few clicks.
It isn’t just security specialists who use the platform at this school district. While the district’s central monitoring team uses the software to manage and respond to door and intrusion alarms, receptionists also monitor intercom video and can remotely confirm the identity of visitors before granting or denying access. The school district is now considering adding other technologies to further enhance safety and security. These include enhanced analytics, mobile functionality, visitor management and screening, and even automatic license plate recognition.
Don’t Just Change Technology, Change Your Mindset
Moving away from older, disconnected security technologies isn’t just about investing in new technology. It requires a change in mindset about how to secure your district.
All elements of the security system should work together, bringing data from all sensors and devices into one place. In the end, you want to aim for seamless control of video surveillance, access control, intrusion, and other systems within one unified system.
It’s also important to keep in mind that sometimes the best solution isn’t to add another camera. Cutting back a shrub that’s blocking a view, adding lighting in dim areas, or installing a sensor may be a better response to certain security problems. Often, combining video data with analytics and intelligence from other devices can be the game-changer you need.
Many tools are available to help you use video surveillance more effectively. If unauthorized entry or trespassing is your biggest concern, combining video surveillance with perimeter protection technology can help. Have you been having problems with students damaging or tampering with your cameras? Camera integrity monitoring is an option.
The best place to start is to clearly define the problems that need to be solved, the requirements you have, and the outcomes you hope to achieve. When you have clarity on these points, your decisions are guided by your priorities so you can feel confident you are investing in the right solutions.
When you have a small team responsible for monitoring a large campus or district, your team has a lot of responsibilities to juggle and procedures to follow. Regardless of the exact pain points you face, choose a modern security solution with a decision management system that can automate steps based on your policies and procedures.
A unified security solution simplifies operations. It empowers your security team to manage and interpret data all in one place.
Bruce A. Canal, CPP is the education executive lead for Genetec.