Intelligent Unlock 3: Crowd detection

Suddenly, society came to a standstill.
We were asked to work from home as much as possible, shopping streets became deserted and sports clubs had to close their doors.
Fortunately, there are now fewer Corona infections and deaths and the strict measures are slowly being relaxed.
We are moving from an Intelligent Lockdown to an Intelligent Unlock.
However, we will have to keep the distance of 1.5 meters for a longer period of time.
But how are you going to do that in your organization or institution?

In this situation – in which we are all looking for opportunities for a 1.5-metre society – we use our expertise to make working and living together easier, better and safer.
In a series of short articles, we outline some examples of how you can use (your existing) security technology for this.
This article focuses on Crowd Detection with smart camera systems.

To prevent new corona infections, it is important that people keep their distance from each other.
Therefore, fewer people are allowed in a room at the same time.
In certain spaces or areas such as corridors, stairwells and shopping malls, it is more difficult to maintain distance and there is therefore a high risk that this will go wrong.
In those situations, a smart camera system with Video Content Analysis (VCA) that warns if too many people are too close to each other is a good solution.
You may already have this functionality (unnoticed).
Many video management systems and more and more cameras are now equipped with (more or less extensive) VCA capabilities as standard.
If not, this could be an interesting addition to your camera system.
VCA analyses your camera images (in real-time), recognizes certain situations and can give an alarm based on deviations.
You define these deviations yourself, as well as the type of alarm.
For example, if your camera system detects that people are too close together, it can play an audio message asking people to keep more distance from each other.
An alarm notification can also be sent to your monitoring station, after which one of your security staff can go to the relevant location.

How does Video Content Analysis work?

VCA detects moving objects and can also detect the direction in which and the speed at which people are moving.
Crowd Detection is one of the possibilities of VCA, in which a virtual area is defined and within that area it can be signalled that people are too close to each other.
The latter is done by dividing the large area into a matrix of smaller areas and counting the people within it.
As soon as the number of people in a certain area exceeds the predefined maximum, the system will issue an alarm.

Future-proof investment

With a solution like this, your organization can reopen and employees and visitors will feel welcome and safe.
It is difficult to predict how long this temporary ‘new normal’ will last.
We believe it is important that the investments made by organisations remain profitable in the long term.
Video Content Analysis can also be an interesting solution after the crisis, for example to improve your control room efficiency or to search video images for certain events or dates in a few minutes.
Read more about this in our article about Video Content Analysis.

We like to think along with you! Do you have any questions or would you like to exchange ideas with us about this type of solution? We offer you the opportunity to speak for an hour, free of charge and without obligation, with one of our specialists. Remotely, of course. Our specialists can tell you exactly what the best solution is for your situation and challenge. Call for an exploratory meeting: (026) 479 22 33, mail to sales@mactwin.nl or visit our contact page.