Why Video Surveillance is a Key Component to Safe Cities

Though each individual component of a city possesses unique characteristics, the key to enhancing safety for citizens and assets starts with building an infrastructure that enables law enforcement to be able to easily view video from a large number of sources. How can this be achieved? Through the use of cutting-edge video surveillance.

360-degree Cameras: Simultaneously See the Entire Scene While Focussing on Areas of Interest

First of all, for cities to be truly safe, surveillance needs to be able to provide complete situational awareness, this means all angles, all areas, and no blind spots! The most successful way to achieve this with today’s technology is through leveraging both 180 and 360-degree cameras coupled with powerful video management and advanced analytics to create a comprehensive solution.
Video cameras that leverage 180 and 360-degree technology and innovative dewarping (to create more natural-looking views) in both live and retrospective video feeds can allow cities to:

• Minimize risk: With threats such as vandalism, theft, violent crimes, and terrorism plaguing cities today, surveillance cameras can be used to both deter and detect events in all captured areas, as well as enable security officials to view footage live and retrospectively to track or locate a suspect.
• Cover more ground: Between groups of people, clusters of traffic, and tightly spaced buildings, any type of surveillance system in a city is naturally put to the test when it comes to obtaining extensive coverage. Unlike PTZ cameras, which only capture specific parts of a scene, 360-degree cameras can pick up activity across expansive areas without blind spots.
• Improve response: When a security incident presents serious risk and danger to those nearby, officials must be able to quickly access the entire situation. 360-degree technology enables personnel to make fast but informed decisions by allowing them to simultaneously see the entire scene while also being able to focus on areas of interest. And when combined with advanced analytics and artificial intelligence solutions, this reaction can become proactive, as this technology creates the opportunity to identify abnormal behavior or suspicious individuals.
• Develop partnerships: As mentioned above, the assorted agencies that play a role in municipality security and overall success must be able to work together. Video footage from surveillance cameras can be combined with additional data points in a single interface, creating the basis for a strong and cohesive relationship between all involved.

Compression Technology Saves Bandwidth Usage

But in order to provide the very best surveillance, security cameras need to leverage powerful SoCs (Systems on a Chip) to power advanced technologies. 360-degree cameras that provide high-resolution images, seamless dewarping capabilities, the ability to generate multiple views at once, and excellent light management have a much better chance of capturing criminal activities. Of course, combining all these capabilities can cause an increase in bandwidth and data storage, increasing costs on already cash-strapped cities. But by investing in cameras that combine the very best in surveillance technology with state-of-the-art compression technology, bandwidth usage can be significantly reduced (by an average of 50 % or more) keeping storage costs under control. This means that having highly efficient cameras across cities to maximize the safety of citizens and infrastructure doesn’t need to cost the earth.

Cities are Moving Beyond Basic Surveillance

Of course, video surveillance cameras are only part of the story, in order to create a truly smart and safe city then they must be part of a much wider ecosystem. Global digital transformation is accelerating at an unprecedented rate and is allowing cities to deploy technology in ways never seen before. By bringing together the capabilities of IoT devices, analytics, 5G and AI the gap between private and public entities is closing, consolidating data and information from across cities, to create almost instantaneous actionable insights on a staggeringly large scale. Cities are moving beyond basic surveillance of individual siloed spaces – they are becoming truly connected, they are becoming smart and safe.
It’s not just Oncam that are seeing the growth of smarter cities as a positive thing, their SoC partner Qualcomm Technologies is also excited to be leading the charge with their Connected Intelligent Edge vision and Qualcomm Smart Cities Accelerator Program.
“At Qualcomm Technologies, we are leading the realization of the Connected Intelligent Edge, enabling powerful and efficient IoT devices that can transform cities and spaces from smarter infrastructure and utilities to safer transportation and connected emergency services. We’ve collaborated with Oncam on their C-Series camera portfolio which targets security and safety applications. The C-Series is powered by the Qualcomm Vision Intelligence Platform – a platform capable of offering powerful image processing to drive more intelligent connected cameras,” said Jerome Jacqmin, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Qualcomm Communications S.A.R.L.