COVID-19 has changed our way of life at both a professional and personal level. As businesses reopen to give way to a new definition of normalcy, there remains public and health safety guidelines to curb the spread. It has been established that social distancing and wearing masks play a pivotal role in limiting the spread of COVID-19. Many storefronts and business offices are looking for additional methods to ensure their staff and visitors and safe.

BearCom, partnered with Motorola Solutions and Avigilon, is committed to providing mission-critical technologies which protect people and their communities. In the face of this global pandemic, we are implementing several solutions, including analytics and software technology, that can be leveraged to help organizations effectively protect their employees and customers. In conjunction with Avigilon surveillance cameras and analytic software, much of the work to ensure you are following proper protocol can be automated by video surveillance. Let your cameras do the occupancy counting, mask detecting, and more so you can get back to focusing on what matters to you—your business operations.

Occupancy Counting

Motorola Solutions and Avigilon have released an added feature in Avigilon Control Center (ACC) 7, the latest release of the video management software, called Occupancy Counting.

This occupancy counting technology can provide organizations an easy and streamlined way to count and identify the number of people in their facility at any given time. The feature aims to remove the staffing costs required to count people manually and the subsequent guesswork on occupancy by frontline employees, particularly where facilities have multiple entry and exit points.

Occupancy Counting helps organizations comply with social distancing guidelines by limiting the number of people in a facility, thereby reducing the interactions between them. Occupancy Counting leverages Avigilon’s analytic-enabled cameras that feature advanced object detection, including enhanced detection of people, which is particularly suitable for facility entrances or exits. AI-powered video analytics detect and classify a person crossing the entry or exit point and automatically translates these analytic events into entry and exit events.

What is required? To deploy the Occupancy Counting feature, Avigilon H5A or H4A cameras or third-party cameras connected to an Avigilon Artificial Intelligence Appliance. Avigilon Cloud Services (ACS) dashboard can be used to track history and export occupancy reports.

Social Distancing

Organizations can pair the Occupancy Counting feature with Avigilon’s social distancing technology for a more powerful solution. Avigilon’s social distancing technology is powered by video analytics to automatically calculate the distance between individuals in the H5A cameras’ field of view. Managers can continuously monitor social distancing efforts within a facility, run reports of when social distancing violations occur and identify high traffic zones requiring additional attention or corrective action.

Face Mask Detection

Motorola Solutions’ Face Mask Detection technology provides effective monitoring and enables proactive, real-time responses from your team. This advanced video-based detection technology can accurately detect objects in the camera’s field of view, classify them as humans and determine whether the subject is not wearing a mask.

This new feature relies on AI-enabled video analytics and specially placed security cameras to determine when an individual is not wearing a face mask within your establishment. Once the feature detects an individual is in violation, this prompts an automated alert through Avigilon Control Center™ video management software.

Contact Tracing

Motorola Solutions’ Avigilon™ Access Control Manager (ACM) is a physical access control system that is designed to help businesses protect what matters most. The ACM™ system seamlessly integrates with Avigilon Control Center (ACC) video management software to provide a unified security solution that helps higher education institutions proactively monitor and secure campuses. Features from a unified ACM and ACC™ system can provide important insights to help support contact tracing efforts, such as determining potentially exposed individuals and contaminated areas so the higher education institution can act faster.

You can also be notified of these surveillance alerts via your two-way radios. For example, if an Avigilon surveillance camera determines the occupancy level has been reached, a text or voice alert can be sent to certain personnel, notifying them a line queue will need to be formed. Staff can also be notified of those without masks or within 6 feet of another person. This allows your staff to be productive rather than waiting and guessing.

As we try to acclimatize to this new social norm, there will undoubtedly be resistance from some members of society. While we can’t have our eyes everywhere, we can have the right technologies in place to ensure that we are indeed doing our absolute best to slow the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak and mitigate the threat of a second wave of the pandemic.