Tornike Gamzaini, Security Systems said, “This technology is assisting us with planning strategies and implementing smarter workflows for better visitor experiences.”
The Glenstone Museum is a modern and contemporary art museum integrated into nearly 300 acres of gently rolling meadows and unspoiled woodland in Potomac, Maryland. Since its opening in 2006, it has offered a contemplative, intimate setting to experience iconic works of art and architecture, featuring both outdoor and indoor installations.
Several years ago, to better protect both the artwork and visitors, the museum installed a network of video cameras for on-site security. The museum was inspired to optimize this infrastructure and implement the BriefCam Video Content Analytics Platform after meeting representatives from another national museum that uses and recommends BriefCam’s solutions. The Glenstone team understood that BriefCam could maximize the value of their existing video surveillance system, which would not only benefit their security personnel, but their operations and visitor experience departments, as well.
Integrating with the existing infrastructure
Like many museums, Glenstone places significant emphasis on ambiance and the visitor experience.
Consequently, this influences the museum’s security infrastructure, necessitating that any technology installed must balance the organization’s unique security and damage prevention needs, without distracting visitors from the art on display. For Glenstone’s unique and extensive property, which includes priceless works of art throughout the galleries and landscape, as well as storage areas and parking lots, it was critical to unobtrusively elevate the museum’s video surveillance infrastructure. The environment includes three hundred cameras, the ExacqVision VMS, as well as motion-triggered alarms and other mission-critical technology solutions for access control and lighting management.
An important consideration for the 2021 BriefCam implementation was carefully optimizing camera placement to achieve the museum’s analytics goals and refining accuracy across cameras without compromising visitor experience and security objectives.
Tornike Gamziani, Security Systems Technician for the Glenstone Museum said,“The BriefCam team has been a helpful resource as we have refined our use of the system.” He added, “Additionally, the training resources provided by BriefCam made it easy for our team to quickly become comfortable with the software.”
Powering proactive and preventative security
Glenstone values a quiet, serene environment, while placing high priority on physical security optimization. The museum has configured real-time alerting to receive notifications from the BriefCam platform when pre-defined activities of interest occur, such as a visitor approaching a work of art too closely or wandering outside property trails. The systems operator can quickly review the alert and make decisions about how to respond to the behavior in order to preserve property, safety, and ambiance.
The team also leverages BriefCam REVIEW for accelerated video investigation after incidents.
“The extensive set of search filters helps us pinpoint what we need to accurately and quickly resolve security cases,” said Gamziani, who oversees the adoption of security technologies for the Glenstone Museum.
Enhancing the visitor experience through data
Maintaining a consistent, uncrowded environment is a critical objective of the Glenstone visitor experience team, which relies on continuous, accurate ticketing and visitation data. Although admission to the museum is free, it requires a ticket. Ticket availability is capped through a reservation system and monitoring live traffic in the museum helps to enable a consistent and positive visitor experience.
In addition to integrating with the video infrastructure on site, BriefCam can seamlessly export video metadata to the museum’s business intelligence platform, Power BI, to enable deeper data tracking and aggregation across multiple data sources. Tiffany Choi, Manager of Reporting and Analytics said, “Utilizing BriefCam’s people-counting analytic capabilities helps us validate ticketing data and effectively track real-time occupancy in the museum, which helps us optimize our ticketing process and visitor experience.” The dynamic release of tickets ensures that the museum is neither overcrowded nor underutilized, to achieve consistent visitor volumes throughout the day and maintain an optimal capacity throughout business hours. Glenstone is able to achieve this with BriefCam’s Video Content Analytics Platform.
Realizing more value from video data
Beyond tracking occupancy and visitation and optimizing security, the museum is considering additional ways they can apply BriefCam technology to drive efficiency and decision-making across several other departments such as planning, operations, and guest services.
While knowing how many people visit their museum is important, it would also be meaningful for Glenstone to understand how visitors are navigating the property and its exhibits. BriefCam video analytics shows how visitors tend to explore their extensive property and where they spend their time. This allows the museum to make data driven decisions to optimize traffic flows, so their visitors are exposed to different art installations and engage with the different settings and amenities on the property. BriefCam visualizes the museum’s aggregated traffic and occupancy data, so the appropriate stakeholders can easily understand patterns and trends and more effectively anticipate and prepare for traffic peaks with staffing, signage, and other solutions.
According to Tornike Gamziani, “The more we work with the BriefCam team, the more we learn about best leveraging the platform. This technology is assisting us with planning strategies and implementing smarter workflows for better visitor experiences.”
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