Smart cities are no longer a vision of the future; they’re already here thanks to cutting-edge surveillance infrastructure

With crime on the rise and terror threats against urban areas growing, improving safety in our cities and towns is a growing concern for those tasked with protecting us.

The most recent UK crime figures show a 24% rise in violent crime in England and Wales in the 12 months to June 2016. This includes a 9% increase in knife crime and 7% jump in gun crime.

The number of murders has climbed by 144 to its highest level in over five years, while sexual offences rose by 14%. It’s a similar story on other the side of the Atlantic.

The latest FBI annual crime statistics highlighted that there were an estimated 1,197,704 violent crimes committed in the US in 2015, an increase of 3.9% from 2014 numbers. Robberies were up 1.4% and murders and non-negligent manslaughter increased 10.8%. Both rape and aggravated assault numbers were also higher (6.3% and 4.6% respectively).

Law enforcement and security agencies are continuously seeking better ways of gathering and analysing intelligence in order to prevent – or at least reduce – crime.

While sharing information between agencies is important, advancements in video surveillance technology and analytics are giving them an increasingly powerful tool in this battle. Taking advantage of these innovations however presents a big challenge.

Technology breakthroughs

New technology breakthroughs have led to multi-sensor, high-definition cameras that are now more powerful and affordable, meaning that they can do more than ever before. Security officials can therefore  be more ambitious when expanding city surveillance systems to provide greater coverage and visibility.

Cameras located inside and outside of buildings, throughout transport and infrastructure hubs, in trains and on buses, as well as those on streets and in car parks, are helping to provide more ‘eyes and ears’ for security services.

A Cambridge University study revealed a 93% drop in complaints against officers by members of the public over 12 months when body worn cameras were present

Surveillance is no longer restricted to fixed cameras either. London’s Metropolitan Police recently launched what is thought to be the world’s biggest ever roll-out of body worn video cameras to frontline police officers.

Following a successful 11-month trial, around 22,000 cameras are currently being issued to neighbourhood and response officers throughout the capital.

This follows the publication of a study from Cambridge University that revealed a 93% drop in complaints against officers by members of the public over 12 months when body worn cameras were present, indicating a significant improvement in community relations.

The price to pay for having more cameras (and sensors per camera) available, is that there’s more data to store and integrate. In order to handle this extra data, a high-performing, scalable storage infrastructure is needed.

Data management headache

Video surveillance is one of the most challenging workflows for any storage system. When you consider the number of cameras used, type of video format, frame rate, video compression, and length of the recordings, the amount of data that must be managed can become unwieldy.

A typical 2 MP HD camera generates roughly 10GB of data a day. Multiply that by thousands of units and add in data retention time (which continues to increase) and you’re facing a massive data management headache

A typical 2 MP, 1080p high-definition camera, for example, generates roughly 10GB of data a day. Multiply that by thousands of units and add in data retention time (which continues to increase) and you’re facing a massive data management headache.

Stand-alone, self-contained video surveillance systems have been favoured by security agencies too often. Using an edge-to-core architecture can reduce the bandwidth impact on networks, but the decentralised nature of the design can often be limiting.

Systems are not connected with each other and data is often stored in silos. This can slow down the sharing of data between departments and also restricts real-time data correlation and analytics.

Video data is becoming one data set among many as ‘smart’ devices become more prevalent and analytics are able to process the aggregated data. The potential for improving public safety through the intelligent use of technology as applications mature is high.

Consolidation and integration are keys to unlocking the future potential, and that makes storage infrastructure a key consideration.

Tiered architecture

Research by IHS suggests that the use of enterprise storage for video surveillance applications is expected to grow at 15.5% CAGR from 2015 to 2020. The value of video surveillance data can be expanded through a centralised strategy using enterprise storage and a tiered architecture.

Data can therefore be consolidated and aggregated with other sensor input, and it becomes easier to scale when more capacity is needed. Centralised storage can also simplify inter-agency data sharing and make it easier to integrate with other systems and interfaces.

The importance of a multi-tiered architecture should not to be overlooked either. With more data to be stored and longer retention times, storage cost is a factor to consider.

A multi-tiered architecture combines the speed of enterprise storage with lower cost options such as cloud storage and tape for long-term retention. Large volumes of data can be stored, searched, and retrieved cost-effectively with the right data management capability.

This opens up many new possibilities for security and law enforcement agencies to make cities safer through the use of video data.