Year: 2020

Videonetics has been honored with the CSI IT Excellence Award 2020, for its AI & DL DeeperLook™ platform. The award was presented at 53rd Annual Convention of Computer Society of India (CSI) at Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneshwar. Initiated by CSI, this award recognizes the achieved exceptional results through the organization’s outstanding implementation of technology and its high levels of professionalism in IT. CSI is the largest association of information technology professionals in India, with over 90,000 members and the CSI society has 70 chapters all over India. Videonetics AI & DL DeeperLook™ enabled Intelligent VMS and video analytics along with intelligent traffic management system (ITMS) was adjudged as winner after surpassing rigorous evaluations by panel of IT professionals, scientists, academicians, project managers, CIO’s and CTO’s. The state-of-the-art DeeperLook™ is a distributed video and data analytics platform which is deployable at cloud as well as in edge devices. It not only improves the performances of the conventional analytics, but also paves the way for many new security and surveillance applications. Commenting on the achievement, Dr. Tinku Acharya Fellow IEEE, Founder & MD, Videonetics said, “We are thankful to CSI for acknowledging our innovation. Trained with humongous amount of video data, AI & DL DeeperLook™ enabled solutions are successfully deployed across a range of verticals to efficiently address their security & safety challenges and improve business efficiency along with productivity”. He further added, “We will continue to invest in R&D to generate Indian intellectual properties with a mission to create local solutions for local problems.” The three-day 53rd Annual Convention attracted a congregation of more than thousand delegates, decision makers, stalwarts from government, healthcare, hospitality, education and many more.  

Parking can be a major chore for shoppers and commuters alike. Searching for a space in a parking lot can waste valuable time, which is frustrating at the start of the working day for commuters, and a disruption to the shopping experience for retail customers. What’s more, slow paper ticketing systems can cause congestion as drivers queue to enter and leave. Intelligent parking guidance and smart entrance/exit control can ensure efficient, free-flowing parking at all times, while improving the user experience. Parking lots that are close to town centers or attached to popular retail and entertainment facilities can be especially problematic. During rush hour or times of high customer flow, congestion can build at entrances and exits, resulting in lengthy queues. Given the extent of customer frustrations – and the rising costs of land on which parking lots are situated – organizations must make the most efficient use of the space available. In fact, those who succeed in doing this can potentially turn parking into a competitive advantage. Smart parking solutions State-of-the-art smart parking solutions can improve the management, security and profitability of parking lots, thanks to an array of new and intelligent features. Simpler entrance and exit management Smart parking solutions can integrate the latest barrier technology with industry-standard automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras, to make entering and leaving parking lots much more efficient. By rapidly identifying vehicles and sending this data to the barriers, intelligent cameras can speed up vehicle flow and can minimize queues, improving the productivity of the whole parking site. When it comes to payment for parking, organizations can also integrate an ANPR system with a third-party ticketing system, to make the customer experience even smoother. Intelligent parking guidance Parking guidance cameras can automatically monitor the availability of spaces. One camera can have visibility of multiple spaces, and intelligently detect if there is a vehicle in each one. This information is sent to a guidance terminal, which then calculates how many spaces are occupied or available, and informs customers via parking guidance screens installed at critical junctions of the parking lot. In addition to this, a dynamic lighting indicator system can be incorporated to guide driver straight to available spaces, helping to ensure they can always park their cars quickly. ‘Find my car’ A holistic smart parking solution can also improve driver safety and offer them peace of mind, by helping them to locate their cars efficiently when they return to the parking lot. Using touch-screen Query Kiosks located at the entrances, drivers can simply enter their license plate details to locate their vehicle on a schematic floor map. The system can also give them the shortest and quickest route to it. Find out more The Hikvision smart parking solution gives parking operators everything they need to improve their daily operations, from entrance & exit management, to parking guidance and customer vehicle location. It can optimize the use of parking lots, boost the flow of vehicles, and enhance driver satisfaction – which means parking is always efficient and cost-effective.  

Today, the ease of getting from point A to point B, the effective movement of goods and services, and the flexibility and integration of various modes of transportation are the key aspects of mobility. Smart mobility has been a key theme in the transportation industry for a while. The idea is to keep traffic flowing and help people to get where they need to be, in a smarter way. To this end, industry players are now innovating and introducing advanced technologies and solutions. Examples include intelligent traffic management systems, free-flow tolls, autonomous driving, smart location solutions and more. At the same time, traffic congestion, aging infrastructure, rapid urbanization, and increasing sustainability demands are also intensifying the need for smart mobility solutions. One way to overcome these obstacles is to use intelligent video surveillance technology for improved traffic management, making the roads safer and more efficient for every user, while also reducing emissions. Perceptive intersections Relying on intelligent video analytics, traffic video cameras identify traffic build ups at intersections by counting numbers of vehicles crossing an intersection and detecting their speed, while also counting the number of vehicles queueing in real-time. Aggregated data informs the system when to switch traffic lights to red or green. Intelligent optimization for traffic signals ensures more effective traffic flow. Benefits: Improved safety on roadways, intersection reconstruction can be avoided, drivers can be advised about the speed of their route, forecasted by traffic signals, reduced wait times and stress for commuters, reduction of harmful emissions, and positive impact on public satisfaction. Road safety Traffic incidents can be disastrous, not merely for causing congestion on roads but sometimes far worse – resulting in injuries and even fatalities. These incidents have many causes, not the least of which is drivers’ willfully violating traffic laws. Video technology can aid in detecting all kinds of events – for example – illegalparking, jumping a red light, wrong-way driving, over-speeding, and making illegal U-turns can all be detected by smart camera technology. By using deep learning technology, cameras can recognize these events and traffic authorities can be immediately notified to enable necessary actions even before traffic incidents occur. Scenarios include stopping a driver who is occupying an emergency lane, or notifying a driver who parked their car illegally. Furthermore, ticketing systems can be incorporated to further regulate driving behaviors. Benefits:Incident prevention, better driver performance, increased safety on the roads and streets etc. Public information Sharing information is the key to keeping city drivers and travelers informed. Intelligent communication about warnings and updates helps everyone save time, avoid frustration, and simplify everyday mobility. This can be done via traffic guidance screens displayed at highly visible locations such as congested areas, transportation hubs, shopping malls, and city plazas – or even at your fingertips on your favorite mobile apps. Traffic video cameras generate real-time data of traffic flow and incidents, sending it to a central platform to further fuse with data from third-party systems such as radar and GPS systems. They also disseminate traffic information including traffic status, warning and advisory notices, as well as parking status. Benefits:Improved public awareness of traffic information, improved travel convenience, overall enhancement of mobility in the city, and more. The Hikvision practice Hikvision has accumulated sophisticated experience in traffic management both at home and abroad. Product lines offer versatile solutions to resolve multitudes of problems in urban traffic management, traffic incident management, highway management, and more. Going deeper, it’s essential to note that efficient signal control management is dependent on the quality of traffic data, system algorithms, and the hardware devices in use; it is also closely related to the mobile environment, such as road conditions, historical traffic conditions, and urban infrastructure. Because of this, no single solution solves traffic congestion everywhere. Hikvision believes that only by working closely with city authorities, public safety organizations, consultants, even academia and other relevant stakeholders, can applications and operational processes be developedto achieve the best possible outcomes. The possibilities for traffic video data are endless, especially now that it can employ artificial intelligence for advanced functionality. Harnessing its power will make all the difference, but the ultimate goal remains the same: safe and smooth traffic, smart mobility, and improved quality of human life.  

Shivindra Pratap Singh Managing Director Lancers Network Limited As the past two months adequately highlight, the COVID 19 pandemic has found most of this world unprepared and off-guard. Even the most developed countries and best of economies have been brought to a grinding halt. Human life as we have known it since the end of World War II has been held hostage. The Corona virus has successfully managed to infuse a sense of doubts and insecurity into the minds and thoughts of 7 billion human beings across the globe. Unfortunately, as of now the best that our science and knowledge has in response to COVID 19 is a lockdown, to send everyone home and ensure the streets are deserted. The economic fallout of this pandemic and the resultant lockdown is yet to fully reveal itself. The focus at this stage is to ensure that it does not pass from human contacts. It is evident that there is not a single industry that has not been jolted by the events of the past 12 weeks. Supply chains have been brought to a grinding halt, and the best of business continuity plans have been made to appear useless. In an unprecedented turn of events, this is probably the first time in human history that both demand and supply across the world have been sabotaged like this, or that is what we would like to believe. Every disaster, natural calamity or conflict witnesses emergence of a special type of entrepreneurs who specialize in business of disaster – ‘disasterpreneurs.’ These individuals identify the business opportunity that any disaster offers and then single mindedly go after profiteering from it, ignoring the law of the land, ethics and basic humanity. This business of disaster can be rather profitable. We in India are witnessing these ‘disasterpreneurs’ in the form of counterfeiters who have stepped in and filled the last mile supply chain vacuum by providing substandard, mostly locally assembled/ produced spurious products. As per some industry estimates under normal, read non-pandemic, circumstances counterfeiting causes a loss of over Rs. 1 lakh crores annually to the Indian economy. It is believed that over 10,000 enforcement actions are annually undertaken by various law enforcement agencies across the country. Close to 100 enforcement actions have taken place across India since the lockdown started. Every single successful brand is suffering from this menace including pharmaceuticals, FMCG, automotive, liquor, cement, electronics etc. It is imperative at this stage to acknowledge and understand the potential health, safety and security risk posed by the greed of these ‘disasterpreneurs.’ Fully aware of the priority of the law enforcement at this point in time, these counterfeiters are working on full capacity to maximise profits across the country. As we plan our next 12 weeks it is important for the law enforcement authorities to ensure they focus on curtailing the counterfeiting activities by proactively engaging with the brand protection and security functions of leading brands. The nation cannot afford a public health scare and loss to the exchequer emerging from mass distribution of counterfeit products across the country. Relentless pursuit of these perpetrators followed by enforcement actions is a need of the hour and that must be incorporated into our country’s priority policy objectives.  

Based on an all-India campaign, Bhopal was selected in the first round of 20 smart cities, to transform the city into a leading destination for smart, connected and eco-friendly communities focused on education, research, entrepreneurship and tourism. The challenge Known as the ‘city of lakes,’ Bhopal is a historic city with a population of over 2.5 million. With an expanded planning area of 463 square kilometres, Bhopal is among the 16 largest cities in India. In view of its growing population, the city leaders wanted to upgrade the security of its residents, migrants and visitors, by ensuring diligent monitoring across the city. Also, Bhopal faced chaotic traffic flows and repeated violations, causing traffic jams, accidents and fatalities. This not only made everyday life uncomfortable but also increased transport time with a negative effect on economic activity. The solution After rigorous evaluation, a panel of city leaders, stakeholders and industry leaders selected Videonetics for this project. Videonetics designed a solution based on its AI & DL powered unified video computing platform (UVCP™) encompassing intelligent VMS, intelligent video analytics and intelligent traffic management system. 24×7 city-wide surveillance Today, over 350 IP cameras are deployed in Bhopal, covering major entry and exit points from the city, places of strategic importance, locations of public gatherings, traffic junctions and business districts etc. Operators are quickly responding to any incident from petty theft to more serious offenses. To monitor urban operations round-the-clock, intelligent VMS provides continuous viewing and recordings of these cameras, in a user-friendly interface. Specifically, the authorities can also detect overcrowding, unattended baggage, break-in prediction, counting people and traffic violations in a single interface. Round-the-clock traffic monitoring Today, the city has an intelligent traffic management system (ITMS) suite covering 23 junctions across the city. The suite encompasses automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), red light violation detection (RLVD), over-speeding detection, no helmet detection and triple riding detection. In addition to intersections, the ANPR solution has been integrated with IP cameras at entry-exit points in tourist spots and other places, helping law enforcement to identify non-standardised/ duplicate licence plates, blacklisted and stolen vehicles, and much more. Automated violation prosecution management The ITMS solution not only enables monitoring of the traffic situation 24×7, but also records traffic violations in real time. Videonetics Integrated e-Challan Management Software (ICMS) has been integrated with regional vehicle database to generate e-challan along with incident evidence and violator’s address – all in a transparent manner and with the audit trail of all transactions with evidence. With the help of ICMS, traffic personnel can easily maintain record of all payments, both received and pending. Centralized city view Combining intelligent VMS and ITMS into the unified interface empowers city management officials and traffic police to view real-time alerts, manage them, and respond to them swiftly, from the Integrated Command & Control Centre (ICCC). The impact The Bhopal smart city project has proven to be a great success and has become an exemplary model for other cities. Today, operators have become more efficient and make better decisions by having consolidated monitoring and reporting in the single interface. From helping law enforcement authorities in apprehending vandals to addressing instances of theft, physical confrontations and street crimes, now authorities have critical video evidence available to aid in the investigation of crimes and other incidents. Also, with citizens becoming more sensitised to traffic rules and beginning to follow them, violations have come down rapidly. The traffic data of each junction now provides insights to the administration, which is helping to manage chaotic traffic conditions and create situational awareness at the levels of local and central authorities. “As challans were dispatched to the residence address, people had to pay, and it was quite strict,” said Nitin Dave, Media Manager, Bhopal Smart City, “Now people are more aware about traffic rules, leading to a reduction in the number of e-challans.”  

Quantum Corp. recently announced new product lines and capabilities which significantly expand its video surveillance and physical security product portfolio. The expanded portfolio includes: A new line of network video recording servers. A new line of servers for building management systems and GPU-based video analytics.  New capabilities for the VS-HCI Series, which the company launched in 2019 to provide hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) for surveillance recording, video management, and building operations. These expanded product offerings add to Quantum’s existing solutions for shared archive storage for surveillance, based on its StorNext® file system and the recently announced acquisition of the ActiveScale™ object storage solutions. The result is one of the broadest security infrastructure solution portfolios available from any single vendor.   New network video recording server line Quantum’s new line of network video recording (NVR) servers complement the company’s VS-HCI series and are offered in both mini-tower and rack-mounted form factors to provide customers with a range of affordable, reliable, and high-performance options for surveillance recording and video management. Quantum’s VST mini-tower NVRs are designed to support the surveillance of retail stores, gas stations, small buildings and campuses, and other small implementations, while Quantum’s VS4160 NVR is one of the most dense and highest capacity NVRs available for environments with large retention requirements. New analytics & application servers To support the extreme graphics processing and parallel workload demands of video analytics, Quantum has introduced the VS2108-A analytics server. The VS2108-A can be configured with up to six GPUs in a compact 2U chassis and will accelerate results with leading video analytics software platforms. For access control and building management applications that require a highly available architecture, Quantum is introducing a new highly available application server, the VS1110-A. Quantum’s new VS1110-A Enterprise application server utilizes the same virtual machine (VM) failover capability found in Quantum’s VS-HCI series. Like the VS-HCI series, the VS1110-A server can be monitored remotely via a secure web-based portal, enabling facilities managers, integrators and Quantum support to proactively monitor this system anytime, anywhere. Quantum StorNext and ActiveScale storage for large surveillance archives On March 16, 2020, Quantum announced that it had completed the acquisition of the ActiveScale object storage business from Western Digital. Object storage can be used as a tier for multi-petabyte surveillance infrastructure. Video is typically captured and recorded on higher-performance servers, then archived on object storage-based systems. The combination of Quantum’s StorNext file system and ActiveScale object storage can be a valuable solution for shared archive storage in many surveillance environments. “The most important message from Quantum to all of our customers and partners during this unprecedented time is that our top priority is health and safety of our society, our employees, our communities and all of you. Our next priority is to ensure business continuity and site security,” said Jamie Lerner, President and CEO, Quantum, “Video surveillance plays a vital role in securing infrastructure and critical assets, and in protecting citizens. We’ve applied our years of expertise to build a comprehensive portfolio for surveillance, and we are responding quickly to the needs of our customers.” “Kepler Networks customers are on the front line of change in the surveillance industry, and as video surveillance technology has evolved it has placed unprecedented strain on storage,” said Gavin Bortles, President, Kepler Networks, “Customers who adopt intelligent, scalable storage as the foundation of their new surveillance and security system leave more budget for cameras, analytics, and other tools dedicated to protecting people and property.”  

Prama Hikvision participated in the 4th edition of the Fire & Security India Expo (FSIE) 2020 which was held between 27-29 February, 2020 at IEML, Grater Noida. The FSIE also hosted the FIST Awards ceremony on 27th February at Crowne Plaza Hotel. Prama Hikvision bagged the FIST Award in Product of the Year – Home Protection System category. Commenting on the FSIE participation and FIST Award win, Ashish P. Dhakan, MD and CEO, Prama Hikvision India Pvt. Ltd., said, “Prama Hikvision participated in the Fire & Security India Expo (FSIE) to present its best-in-class technologies and product innovations in the Indian security market. It is one of the most unique expo platforms for the fire and security segments. We are happy to showcase the latest products and innovative technologies including artificial intelligence (AI), AI cloud, big data and IoT. We are glad to have won the FIST Award. It reaffirms our resolve to present latest technologies, products and solutions. I wish FSAI and FIST Award will continue to promote the spirit of excellence among the security professionals and end-users community.” He further added, “We are confident that all the latest products and cutting-edge AI technology applications will enhance the end-users’ engagement with latest technologies. We had displayed ColorVu and AcuSense camera series along with the latest offerings in access control, video door phone, intrusion alarm, perimeter security.” At the event, Hikvision showcased the latest and most advanced technological innovations with AI technologies, the signature DeepinView series IP cameras and DeepinMind series NVRs. It also displayed the AI based applications for face recognition, people tracking and perimeter protection. Hikvision had exhibited central monitoring solution, integrated solutions, PanoVu camera, access control solutions, face recognition terminal, swing barrier, video intercom solutions, intrusion system, under vehicle surveillance system (UVSS), ColorVu camera, AcuSense camera, intelligent traffic solutions, mobile and portable solutions and power, petroleum, oil & gas (PPOG) solutions etc. Pankaj Dharkar, International President, FSAI along with Sandeep Goel Chairman, BIG3 conferences, FSAI, hosted a thought provoking BIG3 seminars spanning over three days. Prama Hikvision also participated in a panel discussion on ‘Safety Systems at Large Assembly Spaces – Multiplexes, Malls, Airports, Convention Centers, Expos, Halls & Alike.’ Ashish Gujarathi, AVP, Non-CCTV Products, Prama Hikvision India Pvt. Ltd. shared the insight on how advanced AI enabled security solutions can secure the large assembly places. FIST awards are initiated by Fire & Security Association of India (FSAI) and powered by Prama Hikvision. The awards recognize the extraordinary contribution of end-users, government organizations, original equipment manufacturers and individuals in various categories. The FSIE expo concluded successfully with some relevant footfall from end-users and government delegates.