Smart Cities are no longer a phenomenon of the future, they are rapidly becoming a part of our digital reality. Smart cities use emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), smart sensors, augmented/virtual reality and many others to better the lives of the city’s respective citizens.
The smart city tackles everyday problems such as traffic congestion, crime and other issues which have merged as a result of rapid urbanization through collaborating with municipalities to harness emerging tech to overcome such challenges.
Video Analytics could play a key role when it comes to safety in smart cities. On a very basic level, video analytics could do wonders to the operational efficiency and level of security systems. This technology could pinpoint and inform the city’s authorities of any anomalies in the behavior of residents through its ability to collect a significant amount of data.
A report by MarketsandMarkets forecasted that the global market for video analytics is expected to grow from $3.23 billion in 2018 to $8.55 billion by 2023, which equates to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.5% throughout the forecast period.
Indeed, this mostly IoT-powered technology is set to transform the functionality of smart cities in relation to safety and security. The report also found that a few major markets will drive the sales for it and reap the rewards of video analytics.
Video analytics offers software which has the ability to provide data based on motion detection, people counting, tamper detection, automatic license plate recognition (ALPR), among others. These advanced analytic solutions can also be tailored based on business-specific cases with varied requirements. It will ensure greater efficiency and productivity for organizations to deliver better services and results to their clients or involved stakeholders.
It could do wonders for data collection and providing in-depth analytics for daily traffic congestion thereby reducing the rate of accidents and making the lives of citizens more pleasant.
These applications run on a central server at the central monitoring station which can be built into cameras. This technology combined with the help of public and private security agencies, would enable a faster time to target when it comes to law enforcement by allowing for a faster search and review method.
A key smart city use case for video analytics would be on-premises deployment whereby the software will be implemented with an edge or server-based architecture behind an organization’s firewall which would cater to different areas of applications. Many organizations have hopped onto this trend in an effort to protect themselves against privacy and security concerns regarding confidential data.
Moreover, the demand for the incident detection application segment is forecasted to be one of the highest during the forecast period as they pose a very valuable asset in the case of public safety infrastructure. They could be used for traffic management which would inherently ensure greater safety on the roads, allowing customers to receive real-time updates based on insights gathered by video analytics. Indeed, intelligent traffic management would reduce the rate of congestion and accidents on the road. The integration of video analytics in surveillance systems make it an extremely valuable asset for smart cities.
Also, in light of the increased demand for the need of highly secure environments and cost effective methods to do so, video analytics could be beneficial for critical infrastructure or hazardous locations such as nuclear and oil and gas plants.