How Video AI Can Open Schools’ Eyes to Enhanced Safety
"It may be difficult to imagine that a solution leveraging cutting-edge video AI technology can be affordable..."
- By Michael Adair
- February 01, 2019
In recent years, tragedies from gun violence at schools have
reached an unprecedented frequency—one that threatens to
normalize school shootings as a part of everyday American life.
It’s hard to deny that very little change has occurred following
such tragedies, with public and political debates often raging to
a standstill, until the next incident occurs, reignites the same arguments
and restarts the cycle.
This status quo doesn’t have to be accepted. The time is now to see
that school safety is not a one-dimensional issue. The advent of video
artificial intelligence (AI) has made it so that schools can innovatively
and cost-effectively improve safety and security measures to
significantly better protect their students, through advanced object
and facial recognition technology that can proactively detect and prevent
a variety of threats.
The discussions around school safety have long been reductive,
but advances in the technology sector show that there are several
new potential grounds to be broken in the search for solutions. The
proposed solutions that get a lot of attention, such as arming teachers
and other school employees, are often hotly debated—a survey
of Michigan teachers found that 71 percent opposed allowing
school employees to carry concealed guns on campus and 67 percent
said it wouldn’t be effective in preventing gun violence in
schools.1 Emerging innovations in video AI offer answers that circumvent
such debates and focus only on the straightforward objective
of delivering greater safety to schools, without adding any more
risk to the equation.
Amidst politicians, school administrators and others looking to
the past and the future for solutions, endlessly debating funding, legislation,
technology and more, video AI can cut through the noise
and offer a sensible solution best-fit for the present. The latest video
AI solutions can generate real-time, intelligent insights, equipping
schools with a powerful, self-learning sensor capable of monitoring,
detecting and interpreting behaviors and movements by people
across physical settings, as well as identifying objects that may present
a potential threat. The key reasons video AI can be the answer
schools have been looking for are simple: the technology can be
extremely easy to adopt, its capabilities make it remarkably effective
and it can make a major difference in both crisis situations as well as
everyday safety.
Safety Innovation Within Reaching Distance
It may be difficult to imagine that a solution leveraging cutting-edge
video AI technology can be affordable, easy to deploy and utilize, but
that’s precisely the case. With the introduction of any novel, emerging
innovation, a feeling tends to persist that they will not be able to
make a realistic impact on everyday lives anytime soon. The reasons
for this range from the costs being astronomical, to certain solutions
demanding drastic upheavals from a behavioral, technnical or infrastructural
standpoint that simply aren’t feasible. Put into the context
of schools and their often-strapped budgets, these challenges are
amplified even further. Which makes it all the more remarkable that
video AI-enabled safety technology is very much an accessible and
cost-effective option.
Why? For one, video AI is a software solution that works with
existing, conventional security cameras. Rather than needing any
fancy new machinery or hardware, this technology simply utilizes
footage and livestreams of the security camera set-up schools already have, turning them into essential insights
and actions that significantly elevate educators’
ability to keep students safe. As a result,
video AI solutions are inherently costfriendly,
especially in comparison to more
drastic options, such as multiple metal detectors
set up at all of a school’s entry points or
a staff of armed guards.
Beyond affordability, video AI also helps
transform a school’s safety strengths without
needing to transform the school itself. Such
solutions don’t replace human judgement,
but instead enhance school staff’s ability to
quickly assess what is happening and how to
best respond.
Additionally, given the nature of how
video AI works, the technology doesn’t
require schools or their students to change
their daily lifestyles. This can be incredibly
valuable in school environments, where the
trauma and mental strain of shootings—
regardless of whether a school experienced
its own tragedy—does not need to be aggravated
on a daily basis by new, in-your-face
safety measures.
Earlier in 2018, lawmakers in Illinois proposed
plans to provide schools with funds
that could help replace armed security officers
with unarmed social workers and
behavior therapists citing mental health support
as a better alternative.2 Furthermore, a
study evaluating the impacts of metal detector
use in schools over 15 years found some
of their research suggesting that the presence
of metal detectors might detrimentally
impact student perceptions of safety.3
The Extensive Power of Video AI
Juxtaposed with how easy it is to adopt,
video AI technology’s capacity to enhance a
school’s safety and security can feel almost
disproportionate. Its object and facial recognition
capabilities are simply that impressive.
The latest solutions available can be uniquely
configured to the needs and layout of a
school, allowing administrators and security
personnel to identify and establish ‘hot
spots,’ or areas of special concern such as
entrances, exits and common gathering
points that could be at higher risk for being
targeted for violent attacks. School officials
can set up alerts and be notified whenever
suspicious or off-hours activity is detected in
those areas, enabling preventative actions to
be taken if necessary.
Taking footage and live feeds from multiple
cameras, a video AI solution also enables
cross-camera tracking or scanning crowds in
and around school grounds with the ability
to track individuals and objects from one
area of camera coverage to another without
losing sight of any specific person or thing.
Leveraging advanced, highly accurate object
detection, video AI solutions can identify
shapes correlating with weapons or items of
concern, such as boxes, bags or other notable
objects that could present risks of varying
levels. Security personnel can be issued
alerts when questionable objects are detected
or left abandoned for periods of time.
Schools can also pre-load their video AI
solutions with publicly available information
that can be cross-referenced, enabling the
system to send automated identification
alerts if it recognizes registered sex offenders,
wanted criminals or other dangerous
individuals on school grounds. This capability
can also extend to include known identities
who should have restricted or no access
to a school or facility. Incidences of children
being picked up—or worse, kidnapped—by a
non-custodial or restricted family member
can be very common, particularly in the
chaos of students released at the end of the
day. But with video AI, schools gain a proactive
measure to prevent such issues. While
these features may spur privacy concerns,
the technology can actually be programmed
to only detect what’s pre-loaded, eliminating
any worries of information being recorded
about the general public.
In fact, schools should ensure they select
video AI solutions that don’t need to collect
personal identifiable information (PII) to
function effectively. The best technologies
available today can generate and assign metadata
on anonymous physical identification
characteristics based on what they see
through cameras. Rather than storing names,
faces, hair color, or similar details, these solutions
build a digital map of math coordinates
to produce a non-invasive skeletal map and
timecode to match. This turns any individual
that appears on camera into a hash ID, maintaining
their privacy while allowing schools
to avoid the risk factors that come with storing
and protecting such information.
Better Safety, in Crises and Beyond
While the tragedies of school shootings and
the damage they leave behind provide the
most pressing need for sensible safety solutions,
video AI technologies offer the promise
of enhanced security both in crisis situations
and on an ongoing basis. In a hypothetical
school shooting scenario, a video AI solution
would deliver several opportunities for preventative
actions such as sending alerts when
any individual is in an area he or she shouldn’t
be at that time, notifying security personnel
of any suspicious objects or activities that are
detected and more. These alerts would provide
school administrators with ample time
to put their lockdown or evacuation procedures
into action while onsite security staff
manage the situation and local police authorities
are notified. The life-saving potential of
video AI-generated alerts is substantial, especially
considering how valuable that extra
time can be in mitigating crises or preventing
them altogether.
That benefit isn’t just limited to the crisis
event alone, either. A school that implements
a video AI solution instantly empowers its
own safety operations with the wealth of
insights the technology provides. By seeing
and understanding how foot traffic moves in
the school, where the hot spots are, areas that
seem problematic during evacuations or
lockdowns and similar details, school
administrators can constantly refine their
safety measures and procedures. The usual
drills can be evolved and perfected based on
insights of a school’s physical environment
that administrators previously couldn’t
access, allowing staff and security to sharper
overall in matters of safety. Therefore, video
AI technology not only proves effective in
the event of a shooting or other crisis, it can
actually help fortify a school’s safety processes
beforehand—making its value as a preventative
measure twofold.
At a time when violent tragedies occur far
too frequently at schools across the country,
it’s more important than ever to combat the
subsequent paralysis and endless debate and
seek out solutions that don’t have to take
sides and can make a life-saving difference
immediately. In video AI, the opportunity is
finally available to realize a safer future in
schools today, rather than betting hopefully
on tomorrow.
This article originally appeared in the January/February 2019 issue of Campus Security Today.