Edgy Analytics

Will analytics at the edge win out? Although initially met with skepticism, the industry is beginning to take notice of the processing efficiency and relative ease of deployment intelligent video solutions from companies such as ioimage, one of the early champions of folding analytic capabilities into cameras.

ioimage, a seven-year-old company based in Herzliya, Israel, has been landing significant contracts since last year, including a subcontracting deal Raytheon to enhance perimeter security at JFK International, LaGuardia, Newark Liberty International and Teterboro airports as part of a broader homeland security project with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. ioimage’s intelligent video solution will serve as a key component in the project’s high-tech perimeter and video surveillance security system, which also includes advanced sensors and multi-sensor fusion, assessment subsystems and facility communications subsystems for complete site management at the airports.

But perhaps even a bigger signal of the market’s new direction was a decision by Florida Power & Light to switch away from its DVR-based solution from Nice Systems in favor of ioimage’s self-contained analytics suite, which includes encoders, command-and-control software, rules driven detection modules for analytics and a digital IP camera. Processing for analytics is done in the camera using on-board chip sets. This allows the analytics to be done independent of a PC, Clark says.

“Analytics in the past have been part of the PC,” says Garry Clark, ioimage’s president of the Americas. “ioimage is not based on the PC. It’s designed from the digital signal processor (DSP) on up. Our whole goal has been, ‘Let’s get to the edge.’”

The approach was validated when IMS Research, a leading international research company, ranked ioimage as market leader for intelligent video surveillance devices with an estimated 26 percent of the total worldwide market.

The market for intelligent video surveillance devices is the security market’s most rapidly growing segment, IMS reported, projecting a compound annual growth rate of more than 100 percent. This market segment should exceed an estimated $3 billion by 2010, the report stated, with sales of intelligent-video-surveillance-devices surpassing PC-based intelligent video content analysis software by the end of 2007.

“The PC has to do 5 million things,” says Clark. “We’re focused on one thing: managing the [security and surveillance] situation.” That means less code and less complexity, but greater focus, Clark says, “10,000 lines versus 10 billion.”

The rules-driven modules are designed for fast user set-up. They include:

  • Intrusion detection, which automatically detects prohibited movement scenarios that can be set in either Movement Behavior or Trip Wire modes.
  • Object removal detection.
  • Stopped vehicle detection.
  • Unattended baggage detection.
  • Autonomous PTZ tracking.

Choice of applications depend on what users want to accomplish with analytics, says Clark, from people counting, tailgating, to maintaining a strong record of who was at a site and what was done. With the processing done at the edge, video does not have to be continually being fed back to the command center. Bandwidth, storage and processing power are conserved for situations where there truly is an event or breach, one reason the equipment has won fans in corporate IT departments. “IT departments have gotten so involved because [surveillance and analytics] takes a lot of bandwidth and storage,” says Clark.

In fact, it could well be ioimage’s efficient use of IT infrastructure that has aided the companies growing success. In an environment where decisions about surveillance systems are increasingly being handled by major contractors like Raytheon, Accenture and IBM—companies that can demonstrate IT credibility will have the upper hand. For now that make ioimage an edgy company.

About the Author

Steven Titch is editor of Network-Centric Security magazine.

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