COVID-19: The Second Wave
Fighting the pandemic doesn’t require investments in short-term solutions
- By KiChul Kim
- February 01, 2021
The second wave is here, and people are
tired of the pandemic as we head into
what will most likely be a long, dark
winter with COVID-19. Campuses of
all sizes need to function at some level
or risk an uncertain future. News of vaccines
brings hope, but the reality is most people and
organizations are going to be in vulnerable
positions this winter. As a business or school
struggling with lost revenues and unforeseen
costs, it’s hard to be enthusiastic about spending
money on COVID-19 related protections
and solutions when we hear that vaccines are
coming. What will happen to big dollar
COVID-19 capital expenses once the virus is
in the rear-view mirror?
The good news is that you can invest in
solutions you need today to help with social
distancing, occupancy monitoring and face
mask detection. Once the virus is behind us,
these same technologies can take on new and
additional roles to protect your campus from
different threats while giving you actionable
data on the day to day operations and management
of your organization. This is particularly
true with regard to the latest AItechnology
inside security cameras.
These new cameras have evolved to
become data sensors that record much more
than images. AI cameras can detect objects
such as people and vehicles. They can store
attributes about those objects such as colors
of vehicles or clothing, they can tell if someone
is wearing a mask or even if they’re
wearing it incorrectly.
They can sense direction and count those
objects. This makes them true data-gatherers
which can give you enhanced insight about the
flow of people and vehicles around your campus.
People are used to seeing security cameras
in their daily lives, so they are an accepted and
innocuous part of the world today.
When COVID-19 hit, companies scrambled
to come up with technological solutions
to help, but it’s worth noting that intelligent
AI-based cameras were really quick to evolve
and step up to the task. They could be easily
programmed to look for masks, since they
already understood what a face and torso
looked like. It was easy to accurately count
people and warn when occupancy limits
where reached in high traffic areas. This is
because with AI (or machine learning), we can train cameras to recognize whatever we
need them to see. Today, it masks, but tomorrow
it could be something else.
As schools and businesses seek to bring
people back to brick and mortar establishments,
it’s going to be important to make
customers, students and teachers feel comfortable,
in addition to simply following
guidelines. Customers will have to feel that
it’s worth going out, versus shopping on-line.
For many, that comfort might in part be
derived from visible occupancy monitoring
efforts and automated voice-down messages
when people aren’t wearing masks or keeping
their distance. Being proactive and visible in
our efforts to protect one another can reduce
anxieties and help everyone be mindful and
adopt good habits.
This article originally appeared in the January February 2021 issue of Campus Security Today.