The next technology wave for the video surveillance market is for it to become the head end for all IP enabled appliances and sensors in the customer?s enterprise. The migration is obvious as you currently have the video surveillance infrastructure in place, which has the bandwidth, IP enabled connectivity, and trained personnel to lead this technology consolidation.

The video surveillance system is the best component in the IP enabled enterprise for analyzing and storing the massive amounts of data that will be received as these technologies consolidate into a single head end monitoring and management topology.

IP enabled appliances such as Video Surveillance, Access Control, License Plate Recognition, Asset Tracking, and Point of Sale Terminals along with IP enabled sensors such as Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC Controllers) and RFID tags are now critical components of a new era of IP enabled Smart Systems and Businesses.

Technology users realize that in order to truly have Real-time awareness and response in their enterprise all of these IP enabled devices and appliances need to be connected and have access to any and all video.

Forward thinking technology users realize that the resultant collective awareness made possible by bringing all of the information from their IP devices together is far greater than just the sum of the individual parts.

What we are seeing is a migration from man-multipliers into technology multipliers with alerts being brought to the forefront accompanied by procedures unique to the event created by the end user which fit their specific needs.

With the event information onscreen alongside its time synchronized video all at one location provides the security personnel with the tools needed to asset the situation and respond to situations immediately.

Having a Unified Security Platform doesn?t mean you bring in all your set-up, credentialing rules, and configuration settings to the command center. That would be a lot to ask for, but what you do need to bring in are the operational features and benefits provided by these IP appliances.

The features I am talking about are the critical alert messages being pushed from the IP appliances to the command and control center.

The command center is generally manned 24/7. It is here where those events can be responded to by trained personnel who make the operational decisions on the spot that become necessary in preventing crimes.

Having the alert information stored with your video has tremendous advantages because from the command center you have access to ALL recorded events from all the IP appliances and access to ALL recorded video from your recording servers from one console.

So instead of being limited to monitoring just doorways with your access control system you have access to any camera view in the network which is time synchronized on playback with any event that happened in your enterprise.

You can do this with the same look and feel from one operational system – the system you already own.

No new operator training for IP appliance alerts: LPR, POS, Access Control, and Asset Tracking – the real time metadata from these IP appliances comes into the VMS system as a camera stream.

The Unified Security Platform will use an embedded search engine allowing multiple levels of searching using Boolean expressions to drill down to specific events using either broad terms to find events or specific terms against the metadata packet.

As an example, for LPR you could search using only a partial plate number, combined with a lane number or state to bring forward all license plates meeting that search criteria during a specific date and time.

This can be done in a few seconds, from the command center console. Or if you had an exact plate number just use the “equal to” operator and have the search engine bring up every video containing that specific plate every time it showed up during the date and time period you specified.

The rules engine can be used to detect unregistered plates for vehicles entering the campus which have not been registered with security.

This can save time in the morning or afternoon traffic where registered vehicles pass freely on and off campus and security personnel just has to deal with the unregistered vehicles.

Having access to all the recorded video from the Unified Security Platform enables you to have access to other camera views in the area enabling the operator to piece together where that vehicle traveled following the initial detection or where it came from before detection.

Using the Unified Security Platform with an access control systems can show every time an individual entered a specific building in the last X-number of days – enter the specific search information and the associated video would be brought forward within a few seconds – not hours or days.

Keep in mind the term IP appliance can be any device: Point of Sale terminal- for retail transactions involving No Sales, Refunds, or Voids.

It could be an access control system used for building entry or building monitoring systems.

It could be an Asset Tracking system for shipping and receiving at loading docks, intercepting important packages, or identifying merchandise re-calls at the loading dock, instead of finding out after stocking the shelves.

In banking transactions it can be either ATM machines or teller workstation transactions to resolve customer disputes on the spot.

For manufacturing operations it can be used to monitor assembly lines for sending an alert for rejected parts or sending a status of completed parts.

The alert information could also be incorporated into real time charting of events by monitoring specific events and when they hit a user-defined threshold push a chart to the client alerting the console operator.

In addition to the event notifications, the user can setup their own procedures that can be easily created and pushed to the command center (again, one central monitoring location) alerting security personnel – when a pre-defined event takes place and then follow these on-screen instructions.

The procedure can instruct personnel to take specific steps to address the issue. The procedure may reference a company-wide policy to follow or provide contact names and numbers to call immediately.

The event can be a single event such as a door forced open or a combination of events such as: Jon Doe (the cashier) entered a No Sale (the event) at the cash register therefore push alert notifying management. In conjunction with the alert a text message could be sent to the store manager alerting them of this No Sale on register xx and they could see if a customer is actually present at the register when this refund is being transacted.

Similar alerts could be applied to license plate recognition system where a predefined plate has been entered into the system and when it has been detected push an alert to security.

Alerts can be: suspect vehicle approaching guard station or restraining order issued on the owner of this vehicle, terminated employee re-entering campus or non-resident vehicle is approaching stop and request additional information.

Having information at your fingertips precisely when needed saves time and can prevent crimes.

Having the IP appliance alerts tightly coupled with you video surveillance system offers more visibility in your security operations as well as a more manageable security system by using many of the assets already in place including personnel already trained to use them.

This consolidation becomes your Unified Security Platform.

About the author: Charles Hickey, PSP, is Director of Operations for ConvergenceTP, a value add software company providing IP appliance integrations to VMS systems. www.c2p.com