In the Media

Home to seven million people, Hong Kong is one of the most vibrant cities globally. For businesses to stay competitive in this environment, they must have the most up-to-date and best technologies. Closed-circuit television (CCTV) is one of those technologies.

CCTV is a smart system that can interface with other building systems or connect with other applications like video analytics. It is a hybrid technology incorporating business intelligence to boost operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

By seamlessly combining CCTV and other building systems, the systems can talk to and work with each other, delivering capabilities to access, diagnose and suggest the best solutions to incidents. When CCTV systems are equipped with video analytics, they provide nimble tracking capabilities with accurate measurements. They can capture the actions of people, animals and objects. Together with other connected applications and devices, video analytics can analyze footage and seamlessly implement any preset instructions.

CCTV provides innovative solutions to major operational dilemmas that can be found across industries in Hong Kong, including in logistics, retail and cloud services. It’s not just video analytics that CCTV can enhance, its potential can be unlocked when interfacing with other building systems such as a carpark system, fire alarm system or elevator. Together, these technologies form a coherent synergy that optimizes user experience and enhances productivity.

Here are three cases from Chubb Hong Kong showing how CCTV system integration or video analytics proactively improved business efficiency:

Data centers, due to the extensive amount of data stored, require best-in-class fire safety protection standards. To enhance the data center’s protection and response level to a fire alarm event, Chubb integrated its CCTV system together with the fire alarm system made by Edwards into the building management system developed by Automated Logic. Chubb, Edwards and Automated Logic are the brands under UTC Climate, Controls & Security, which is a unit of United Technologies.

Having various established brands under the same parent company enables cross-application synergies that meet operational demands. When the fire alarm is triggered, the system analyzes the live camera feed and notifies the building managers and operators based on which fire detector was activated. The building managers can then make a quick judgement on whether it is a false alarm or classify its level of emergency and make better arrangements within the building with more accurate escape instructions.

ATL Logistics Center, the major Hong Kong cargo hub, was in need of a reliable, efficient and fully automated traffic control system, due to its large traffic throughput of over 7,000 vehicles a day.

In an effort to ease the tension of loading and unloading activities at warehouses, Chubb designed a customized system that streamlined and transformed their operations, including the installation of automatic number plate recognition. This allows the system to automatically detect vehicle height, recognize, and register vehicles via their license plate number as they pass through the main entrance to the loading bay—all in less than five seconds. The new system can also collect parking fees through an Octopus smart card and automatically dispatch vehicles to the warehouses.

Long queues and waiting times for elevators during peak hours are common at shopping malls and office buildings. iSQUARE, a shopping mall and office complex in Tsim Sha Tsui, resolved this problem using a range of products and services from the UTC brand portfolio, including Chubb CCTV and Otis vertical transportation systems.

To optimize traffic flow in the building, Chubb’s CCTV system was deployed for smart elevator dispatching. Through advanced video analytics, it automatically counts the number of approaching passengers so that multiple elevators can be dispatched immediately to the lobby or specific floors, based on real-time demand instead of one at a time. Wait times are greatly reduced by 24% on average and people move more efficiently within

The rising trend in building system integration and video analytics is undoubtedly a crucial aspect in the future of commercial development for both global and local Hong Kong businesses. As indicated in the Global Intelligent Video Analytics Market 2017-2021 Report, smart cities around the globe are using numerous technologies to ensure sustainable and efficient environments within different fields, including commercial settings. It is expected that the global video analytics segment will grow at an annual rate of 30.52% during the period of 2017-2021.

Boosting operational efficiency and customer satisfaction are two of the key goals of all businesses. Through the interfacing of CCTV and other applications, businesses can now utilize information about a city’s population to improve security and optimize the use of resources. The introduction of video analytics integration provides a more synergized solution for businesses across industries to evolve into smart commercial organizations. They can meet the growing demand for immediate detection and retrieval of valuable data from surveillance footage by replacing manual and time-consuming tasks. CCTV is certainly the “smart” way to go.

This article is published on the digital transformation column on ComputerWorld Hong Kong.