By Zia Askari | ChannelDrive.in
Singapore is one country which is making all the right moves towards becoming a ‘smart nation’ – Yes, it is a very small country when compared with a large nation like India, but still there are many lessons that can be learnt and replicated here.
Video based analytics is an integral part of realisation for a smart city and hence it is one such area where Singapore is set to move quite fast and create Intellectual property while working with an ecosystem of Independent Software Vendors, System Integrators, Solution Providers as well as global vendors.
Video analytics is the use of computer algorithms to translate video footages into meaningful data to aid business and operation. Video is a big component of Smart Nation. As Singapore develops into a Smart Nation, there is a need for better video analytics techniques to analyse video data for better and more meaningful insights.
This will in turn contribute to better service delivery in sectors that underpin a Smart Nation, such as transportation, healthcare, retail and security.
Speaking during the launch of CommunicAsia 2015, in Singapore, Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for Communications and Information, said that building the world’s first smart nation is only the beginning of the next phase of Singapore’s development in IT and communications arena and segments such as video analytics will play a key role to achieve greater success.
At present, there are constraints such as insufficient manpower to be deployed at the right time and conditions, to ensure security, cleanliness and efficient use of resources. The current state of video analytics needs to be enhanced in terms of accuracy and availability of algorithms in order to unleash greater value in camera investments.
Thus, there is a need to enhance the accuracy of video analytics to address the challenges mentioned earlier, and generate greater value from cameras.
In addition to addressing urban challenges, the Video Analytics can also nurture an innovative and competitive ICM ecosystem. Today as a nation, Singapore is looking towards encouraging industry, research institutions and institutes of higher learning to come together, co-innovate and push the limits to develop algorithms that can enhance the accuracy of video analytics.
A similar move in India can do wonders for the ICT ecosystem where camera vendors, Solution Providers and ISVs come together to drive creation of unique intellectual property around video analytics.
This can build up industry technical capabilities in video analytics and in the process, enable the creation of video analytics solutions that can enhance planning and operations in the areas of resource allocation, safety enhancement, and situational awareness.
Benefits of Video Analytics
The advancement of video analytics technology and solution is beneficial to a Smart Nation in three ways, namely enhancing public safety, optimising manpower utilisation and improving situational awareness:
• Public safety: The ability to detect anomaly in the environment such as unconventional crowd movement and spatial interaction through video analysis, so thatalerts can be sent to agencies to provide greater public safety.
• Resource utilisation: Video analytics can provide additional insights such as crowd level, cleanliness status to assist with deployment of transportation and manpower. In addition, this data can help in long-term planning of facilities and amenities.
• Better Situational awareness: Alerts and event information provided by different video analytics can be used together or fused with other data sources to provide better situation awareness. For example, vehicle speed and direction information provided by video analytics can be geospatially mapped to provide better understanding of island-wide traffic conditions to decide on the best course of actions such as traffic diversion.
What Can India Learn?
a) Sectors: Different business sectors, such as service industry, can benefit because there will be new solutions created from this opportunity that will eventually help with business and operational needs. Organisations will have new video analytics options that can provide situation awareness that helps with better resource allocation and understanding on their customers.
b) Tech companies (Start-ups, SMEs &MNCs), Research Institutes and Institutes of Higher Learning: They are encouraged to come forward and co-innovate with government to find new or enhanced video analytics solutions to address these challenges. In doing so, we can nurture an innovative and competitive Tech and media ecosystem that has the capabilities to create and champion “India-Made” content, products and services on the global stage.
c) Individuals: Individuals will benefit from better public safety and proactive service delivery. Video analytics enables early awareness of events, which in turn enables pre-emptive actions by service providers.
