As cities across the globe gear up towards becoming smart cities, the path towards becoming a safe city is still somewhat uncertain. In the quest to become a smart nation, it should not be enough to just enhance urban living by better sustainability and efficiency with intelligent systems like smart grids, lighting, parking, traffic, waste management, energy management, etc. The city planners also need to think about the city of the future to include scenarios where it would be possible to know if there is a fire, a crime, or a traffic snarl at a particular road. The solution to this is straightforward- Video Analytics holds the potential to turn a smart city into a safe city.

A quick look at what is video analytics

In simple terms, video analytics is the use of computer algorithms to translate a recorded video into a useful data insight, which, in turn, aids in business or operation. It is an integral part of building a smart nation and hence it is one such area where urban municipalities should harness the meaningful data in order to stop crime and bring more security into people’s lives.

A video surveillance system can help in urban development and public safety because the data they provide is:

With the shift from analog to IP video systems and the dramatic improvements in technology, the insights derived from videos are becoming quite useful for city planning and development. Moreover, access to video analytics systems is rapidly becoming a key differentiator for the cities of the future.

Here is a quick rundown of the benefits that a video analytics platform can deliver:

• With proactive video analytics, cities can keep an eye on additional services like public parking space, to easily see where parking space is available. Also, it can monitor whether people are breaking the parking regulations
• City planners can keep track of when cars are moving in restricted directions and can examine through heat maps where garbage is being disposed improperly
• To sustain continued growth in the expanded areas during urban development, modeling and analytics plays a great role for urban municipalities to see where areas of growth are likely and how large this growth will be
• The city can also provide meaningful data to its various stakeholders like healthcare institutions, universities and other large-scale enterprises in order to streamline their operations

According to NVIDIA, it has been reported that there are already hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras around the globe, with the number expected to reach 1 billion by 2020.

What is ahead in the future?

Watching videos from surveillance cameras is a tedious task because it is very difficult for viewers to focus and identify threats as they occur. In fact, a study conducted by Accenture estimates that 98% of the footage is never watched and after reviewing 20 minutes of surveillance recording, 95% of incidents are missed. Therefore, many companies are taking initiatives to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) learning to analyze massive amounts of surveillance video to not only optimize security and municipal operations, but also improve resident’s quality of life. Many believe that by leveraging the power of GPU and deep learning AI, video analytics can provide more accurate results than humans or any real-time computer monitoring.

Keeping public safety in mind, we here at KritiKal Solutions have the technical prowess to build advanced video analytics software that analyzes footage in real-time and detects any change in video frames, as well as sends alerts for events of interests.  Backed by intelligent tools and expertise in machine learning algorithms, we are on track to revolutionize the way cities are managed.