Five Insights for Better Cities

For city managers, building cities with a high quality of urban life for residents means being able to manage the flow of people, vehicles and services across public spaces. Situational awareness across the entire city environment is key. It both underpins a timely response to critical events such as street crime, active shooters and traffic congestion and provides insights into recurrent issues to support continual improvement.

1. It isn’t just about the number of cameras but how they are monitored

Several studies have shown that security operators start missing events after only a few minutes and, within 20 minutes, will miss 95% of occurrences. Security operators can also only monitor a small number of camera feeds, around 12 at a time. The result is that security footage ends up being used only when a crime is reported. There is no response to critical events, and no insights are gained from the footage.

AI video monitoring can efficiently monitor thousands of cameras in real time to accurately identify and report critical events. This means that security operators can focus on coordinating a response, including calling out city security guards, police, or ambulances.

2. The urban environment challenges video analytics

Security cameras in urban environments do not always provide optimal quality footage. Issues include different lighting conditions, weather (including rain, snow, and high winds that may cause camera vibration), insects and animals, dirt, wind-blown debris and outages. This may trigger constant detections for motion-based video analytics.

Cameras may not be well located or may provide coverage from high angles, hampering face recognition.

Video analytics must be able to provide consistent detection of critical events even with less-than-ideal camera feeds, not just with ideal camera locations in a laboratory.

3. Street crime is not just about gun detection

With active shooters targeting public events and even parks, active shooter detection is important and necessary, but not sufficient. There is also the issue of knife crime and fighting that needs to be detected, as well as trespassing and vandalism.

A suitable video analytics platform is not a “one-trick pony”, just offering gun detection. It offers a range of analytics to accurately detect all the types of crimes against people in your area, supporting fast response and accurate tracking of perpetrators.

4. Traffic congestion – feedback leads to continuous improvement

Traffic congestion caused by disruptions to the orderly flow of vehicles is a multi-billion-dollar problem, with Americans wasting an average of 99 hours a year due to congestion, costing them nearly $81 billion in 2022, an average of $1,377 per year. In a large city such as New York, the annual cost exceeds $11 billion.

This is not just a costly impost on citizens and businesses. It is also an environmental issue, with billions of liters of fuel being wasted, adding to pollution and carbon emissions.

How can cities reduce traffic congestion over time? Smart traffic management is key. Understanding where traffic is congested means being able to make both immediate improvements, such as changing traffic light durations or towing a vehicle, and also longer-term improvements, such as redesigning roads.

AI video analytics can count cars, identify vehicles that are blocking clearways, and identify traffic congestion—all in real time. Video analytics drives reporting that helps traffic managers make data-supported decisions.

5. Quality of life is more than just crime and traffic

Citizens want to live in an area that offers them a high quality of life. This means that they can live free of the fear of crime, but it also means that they can live in a clean and orderly environment.

Abandoned object detection can help identify litter or dumped items. Vehicle management solutions can also identify cars that have been parked in the wrong place or have been abandoned so that they can be removed.