Every fall, parents send their children to college. Whether it be in the residence halls, classrooms, athletic facilities or walking home from class in the evening, parents hope that their kids will be safe.
Most college and university campuses provide not only video surveillance and access control, but also utilize emergency call stations, escort services and security guards. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, not all areas of the campus have adequate security. Campus police, campus safety directors and facility management teams have to work together and prioritize how to best utilize the funds available.
With tighter budgets, what can people involved with campus safety do to maximize their budgets and get a good return on investment?
First - Establish a relationship with a strong security integrator who can provide excellent service and support with reliable products. This should include solid warranties and service arrangements.
Second - Working with their security integrator, develop a comprehensive master plan over three to five years that will allow for new security technologies, upgrades and campus expansion.
Third - Expand their current security concept beyond cameras and access control to look at business intelligence that maximizes return on investment (ROI). For example, using video analytics and business intelligence software, you can analyze building usage by counting the number of people coming into a building during any time frame. Looking at this information over time (trend data) could determine better facility usage which may reduce heating and cooling costs, thus creating savings for facility management.
Increased savings = More available money for security initiatives
Using the exact time technology, entrance to major athletic events could be monitored. Is there a high volume of people at one gate versus another? Are there congested points of entrance? Are there entrances that could be closed, thus saving on manpower?
The ultimate goal in both of these examples is to utilize typical security measures (cameras) and analyze the trends over time to make better fiscal decisions.
Every college and university has the opportunity to maximize their ROI by using their video management systems with business intelligence. To help you envision solutions that are available using business intelligence and trend data coupled with video surveillance, download our latest white paper.
