The increasing security concerns around the world, as well as the recent terrorist activities, are forcing governments to highly invest in video surveillance technologies to keep their countries safer. However, the applications of video surveillance are not restricted to homeland security alone, and include industries such as transportation, banking, retail and gaming as well.
Security is currently the main priority for everyone, and the use of video surveillance is not restricted to only protecting people.
Here are a number of industries that can benefit from the use of video surveillance in their environments.
Transportation
Security in public transportation is a major issue around the world. The daily flux of people who move around in different means of transport is immense. Airports or train stations are places where crime is habitually prevalent and systems for the identification of individuals can be hard to apply, as the volume of people is very high. In this sense, systems of facial recognition with video-surveillance make it possible to take advantage of the existing network of cameras to facilitate the search for specific individuals in crowds. These are usually systems operated by the police who work uninterruptedly, carrying out each minute multiple comparisons against a suspect database.
Government
The bodies and forces of security of the State are the guarantors for the protection of a country’s citizens. Their work involves using all the mechanisms within their reach that could help them in their daily endeavors. Amongst these mechanisms, technology has become a customary tool for Governments. So it is common to find biometric elements that help identify people in border control applications. Facial recognition is a highly recommendable technology for use in this type of surroundings, with potential applications in a wide variety of ambits.
Retail
The retail sector needs to resolve the problem of the frequent thefts that take place in shops. This type of crime is characterized by the fact that it is usually the same people who repeatedly commit these infringements. Consequently, having a system at their disposal that makes it possible to identify this type of subject in the most vulnerable places, ends up being fundamental to avoid frequent thefts. The existence of databases with the faces of recurring offenders can help to resolve this problem.
On the other hand, there is also a growing interest in identifying the typology of the clients of a certain business. Systems of facial marketing permit the analysis of visitors’ faces providing demographic data that makes it possible to establish the profiles of habitual clients.
Finance
The banking sector is especially open to adopt novel technologies capable of automating and accelerating processes for person identification. The aim is twofold. On the one hand, it is interesting to authenticate their customers, not only at the time of carrying out bank operations, but also the very moment they enter an office, using either whitelists or blacklists. On the other hand, it is useful to access the profile of the visitors and count the daily number of customers in an office, in order to optimize the resources and personnel of the workplace. In this sense, facial recognition is one of the least invasive and more generally accepted technologies.
Sports & Events
Sports stadiums are often subject to vandalism and as places where a large number of people congregate any incident can become a human tragedy.
Currently people who are prohibited entry to stadiums manage to flout this prohibition with impunity. Conventional security systems are not able to limit the access of specific individuals to stadiums due to the fact that entrance tickets are not generally nominal.
In this regard, facial recognition technology can realize a survey, in real time, of all the faces at a specific access point and send an alert if it detects the presence of any person whose entry to the enclosure is not authorized.
Gaming
Casinos and the gambling sector in general are interesting scenarios for the use of facial recognition technologies. The need, on the part of the security team of a casino to identify people is paramount. They have to be able to determine the people for whom access is not authorized, particularly in those countries where there is no national identity card.
In these surroundings, there is also a need to identify the presence of the best clients (VIPs) of a particular establishment. Facial recognition technology can be of great assistance in this sense, through the use of so-called whitelists.
Written by: Laura Blanc Pedregal
