The global CCTV market is expected to reach $23.5 billion per year by the end of 2014. We are heading to a future where almost ‘everywhere’ is under constant surveillance of a digital eye. The data that we get from all there cameras, CCTVs are beyond the limit of human analysis. It is, in fact, a tedious process for a human to analyze the video output from a camera. However, the insights and information that can be derived from these data are immense and primarily helpful to improve the efficiency of operations of what is being monitored by these devices. The advancements of Artificial intelligence have made a big impact in real-time video analytics, making it more accurate and precise in detecting objects, the motion of objects and even to the scale of detecting the emotion present in a human’s face. This advancement in technology if utilized properly can benefit your business intelligence by adopting informed decisions based on the valuable data you get from the feeds of video analytics.

Video analytics — a technology which automatically analyzes a video content in order to detect events objects the system is programmed to look for. This goes beyond simply setting up surveillance cameras but includes cutting-edge technology that can analyze what’s being recorded through the CCTV. The most common and basic functions of video analytics are object and motion detection which indicates that if there is an object or if an object is moving in front of the camera. Let’s see how real-time video analytics can help improve the operations of organizations and businesses.

Real-time video analytics for understanding customer needs

A real-time video analytics system such as EMOTIX can closely observe a business’s customers and understand what their needs are. For an example, a system having the ability to understand what exactly the shoppers look for in a supermarket by the keen observation of how long they look at it, and what their expression indicates at that specific moment can be used to derive business strategies in positioning products in the supermarket. Such a system can even identify the emotion of a customer when they check out a product.

Moreover, Cameras hooked up with video analytics can provide companies with a wealth of information about how the business is being run, what customers do, and what makes them happy. These all come in hand to optimize business. The data is collected according to customer behaviour can shape a new marketing strategy as well.

Security

The most obvious benefit of video analytics comes under security. The main advantage of having the real-time streaming of video will help to understand and detect several causes that can affect an organization negatively. The analysis through video will easily catch up things that a human eye cannot. VIdeo analytics for security is already being used by many governments including Dubai Government who uses the technology for suspect detections and rules violation detections.

Public monitoring

There are about 500 million surveillance cameras, body cameras of law enforcement and billions of mobile cameras being used .with real-time video recording is a powerful technology which monitor and identifies the violation in traffic rules, troubling behaviors of personnel , unusual human actions and other anomalies such as in advance it can  alert you to any unexpected problems and enable rapid responses to incidents as they emerge. Real-time video analytics will help with security and public safety organizations that develop comprehensive security, intelligence and investigative capabilities using video.

Security-based analytics can also excel at behaviour analysis, whereby simply observing and analyzing somebody ’s walk and talk, make the system to identify their behaviour being suspicious. other features such as motion and object detection with the use of video object tracking are already put to use in many places where the system can identify loitering, identification of the suspicious object, crowding, occupancy in places like airports, sports venues where there are lots of behavioural as well as suspiciousness can be notified.

Facial recognition

Identifies a person from a digital image or from a video source by comparing selected facial features from a given image with faces within a database.they are used in several situations both in business and for security assurance. social media platforms use this technology to tag people automatically, mobile companies use them as face ID to unlock mobile phones and in law enforcement, they are used to identify criminals. Applications of facial recognition include

• HR department of organizations to track employee presence
• Emotion detection to understand customer satisfaction in retail markets
• Automated interviews and auditions
• Product recommendation based on gender, age etc

People search

People search in video analytics detects a particular person’s presence from a given video or even live video footage. This piece of technology is particularly beneficial for security surveillance systems.  Applications of people search include,

• Suspect detection from live public CCTV feeds
• Person identification from videos and images posted in social media

Anomaly detection

Anomaly detection is helpful to detect anomalies happening in a specific region. For example, detection of fire in factory premises or detection of movement in an entry restricted office space etc. When a deviation happens from the usual activities that happen in a place, the system is able to alert the concerned official, take automated actions such as alerting firefighters in case of a fire detected in a building.  Applications of anomaly detection include

• Monitoring mechanical processes executions in factory premises
• Identifying unusual activities that need to be alerted to officials
• Automated experiments
• Rules violation detection

Video analytics are beneficial to organizations in many ways. It helps them to see the ‘unseen’ and make informed decisions to improve the status quo. In near future, we can expect much more advancements in video analytics which can work as a 24/7 proactive supervisor improving the running efficiency of an organization.