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Public safety and the benefits of city CCTV surveillance

For the past years city CCTV surveillance continues to be on the rise. Have you seen a public place without at least one camera in it? It’s hard to remember, right? There are several reasons for the importance of CCTV in our life:

Firstly, the obvious benefits the city council administration, citizens and businesses get from it.

Secondly, city CCTV surveillance becomes more affordable, easier to manage yet more powerful in replacing human labor with intellectual analytics.

Let’s see how each party can benefit from city CCTV surveillance:
 

Safe City

City CCTV surveillance gives the citizens and residents a sense of security which is the number-one mission of video surveillance in the first place. The feeling of “Someone is watching” has been a great deterrent for potential wrongdoers providing public safety.

These days safety in public places is extremely important and requires the most accurate measures to find and eliminate possible threats. “Abandoned objects detector” in Xeoma allows detecting unattended items helping to fight against terrorism.

Not only city CCTV can analyze the picture, but Xeoma with the help of Sound Events Detector also detects sound events like cries and screams, gunshots, breaking of glass and car alarms.
Find more information about the module in this article.
 

Business safety

Businesses experience a sales boom whenever customers feel safe. Along with usual benefits of CCTV surveillance like having key evidence to fight off fraudulent claims, ensuring loss prevention and analyzing customer behavior to address the demand more efficiently.

Also it’s very important for every enclosed public place to be equipped with smoke detectors and security alarms, but sometimes it’s not enough. “Smoke detector” module in Xeoma helps to detect smoke in camera’s field of view and quickly react notifying e.g. fire or security service combining module with notifications modules. Read additional info here.
 

Public safety

And, of course, main benefit of city CCTV surveillance is ensuring public safety efficiently and cost-effectively. It helps lower crime rates by acting as a deterrent. No attack or robberies in the city park means no expenses on investigation.
No vandals ruining common property, monuments and graffitiing buildings means no damage or replacement costs to the city.

City administration can care differently about their citizens, for example, “Slip and Fall Detector” is able to detect when people in the camera view slip and/or fall. This feature will be useful for instant reaction to accidents. Read more about the module here.
 

Policing back up force

While protecting lives and property is the priority, city CCTV surveillance is also good for post-incident investigation as it helps prosecutors by providing them with video footage of the incidents.

Once again, it saves lives of law enforcement officers dispatched to the scene, as they can quickly review the video from the scene online and evaluate the situation.

And with “Face recognition” module in Xeoma it will be much easier for police to recognize faces and find missing people or catch criminals. More info here.

Another useful module for police is “Color recognition” that is triggered when it detects the selected color in the specified area in real-time. The module is designed for independent work to intercept an object by color, or to work in conjunction with other modules like License Plate Recognizer, for example, detecting violations of traffic rules when drivers ignore the red traffic light signal.
 

Resource saving

 

With CCTV surveillance analysis options, the cost of keeping people safe can be reduced (which is more than a vital question due to budget cuts and underfunding) because there’s no need to have staff members watch the monitors 24/7 (or yet worse – patrol the streets) yet still get the right personnel alerted in case of the incident with our automated notifications.

 
 
 
 
Surely, the right software that can handle the needs for the public safety of a big city is the heart of the city CCTV surveillance. Moreover, it’s important that the software support cameras of various manufacturers, not just single-branded cameras, and of different types, to efficiently integrate businesses’ cameras into the system.

Plus, it should be easily upgradable to avoid getting the system outdated and no longer meeting the requirements of today’s world. Software like Xeoma fits perfectly into the profile and would become a great solution as it supports 99% of all cameras in the market, updates are being released every month and Xeoma interface is like a lego constructor that will make the process fascinating.

Sounds too good to be true? Try it now to see for yourself: download perfect software for city CCTV surveillance for free.

 

 

14 January 2014; Updated 25 March 2021

Read also:
Safe City
Free video surveillance with Xeoma
Frequently Asked Questions about Xeoma software
Complete Xeoma User Manual