Are You Ignoring the Potential of Your Video Surveillance System?
Posted on Fri, Jul 16, 2010
Security Products Magazine published a number of case studies in the July issue that focus on using video surveillance to support business operations, not just security. We’ve long been an advocate of using security technology to support the business in other areas and frequently design systems with unique uses of their technology to provide value to the organization.
Here are some ideas about how you could get more out of your video surveillance system from two of our favorite articles:
“Animal Kingdom” examines the Pitsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. Their use of video surveillance helps support not only the security of the Zoo and Aquarium, but also scientific research and marketing. From the article:
“The higher-quality images provided from the cameras in our birthing dens allow us to feel confident that we can assess the well-being of mother and baby, without interrupting the bonding process,” George said. “The video is of such quality that we also can use it as a marketing tool. For instance, we can send video of a brand new cub to our local television stations to be used on the air.”
“By Land or By Sea” examines the difficulties of Port security. One of the recommendations made in this article is to use video surveillance to protect workers in dangerous areas. From the article:
"Because much of the operation is not automated, workers still dodge their way through lumbering yard equipment to manually capture container identification numbers, cargo bay location numbers and other information used to track shipments through the port. With the marriage of optical character recognition and high-resolution PTZ video cameras, however, port operators can remotely capture that information without leaving the operations center, thus minimizing their exposure to dangerous areas of the yard."
Inspired by these articles, we now have a question for you: How are you using your video surveillance technology to support non-security aspects of your organization? Let us know what you think and leave your comments below.