Mobile video surveillance is an umbrella term that can encompass video surveillance in vehicles; video streamed or captured on a mobile device; and mobile video surveillance trailers.
Mobile video surveillance is an umbrella term that can encompass video surveillance in vehicles; video streamed or captured on a mobile device; and mobile video surveillance trailers.
Increasingly the market has seen convergence between vehicle video surveillance and streaming to or from mobile devices. Traditionally, in the vehicle video surveillance market, recorded video on an onboard device is downloaded wirelessly when the vehicle returns to the station or depot. Consisting of cameras and recording devices installed in police cars, taxis, buses, trains, trams and freight vehicles this market is forecast to be worth around $540 million in 2013.
Recently, there has been an increased buzz in both the wireless infrastructure and mobile video surveillance industries for the capability to wirelessly stream video from a mobile video surveillance camera back to a control centre, allowing colleagues to monitor the situation in the field in real time and act accordingly. Primarily this connectivity is achieved using either dedicated point-to-multipoint or mesh infrastructure; or cellular networks.
In the coming year IMS Research predicts that there will be renewed emphasis on intelligent video streaming. This solution is able to actively monitor network connectivity to ensure optimum streaming capability. Intelligent encoding, improved video transmission protocols and handover, and increased bandwidth flexibility means even over lower bandwidth networks, uninterrupted video can be streamed live from a moving camera.
For a control room operative this brings a number of advantages. For the police the ability for a control room to view an incident live allows for instantaneous assessment of the situation and more effective guidance for officers on the ground. On public transport, on-board cameras on buses, trains and trams capture video footage of passengers. If there is an incident developing, the driver can choose to stream live video to a monitoring centre for assistance. In both these examples the quality of the stream viewed remotely needs to enable the operator to interpret the situation and react accordingly. With flexible intelligent streaming, video quality can be altered depending on available bandwidth. Even with lower frame rate video, a more accurate representation of the situation can be conveyed visually versus traditional audio communication. HD quality video is not required instantly to decide on the best course of action, but can be stored locally and retrieved later for evidential purposes.
Using the same streaming technology, video can be sent in the opposite direction to a smartphone, tablet, laptop or in-vehicle monitor from a control centre. This video can either be live or recorded and with the integration of central VMS (Video Management Software) platforms including ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) and facial recognition analytics, additional information can be processed and pushed to mobile devices. In the U.K., both the Met Police chief Bernard Hogan-Howe and the U.K. surveillance camera commissioner Andrew Rennison have indicated how important this capability is to the future of policing.