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Searching surveillance

Intelligent video surveillance improves security and customer service.

The Hilton Americas-Houston is the city’s largest convention hotel. With 1200 guest rooms, two restaurants, a bar, a full-service spa and health club, plus parking, it needs broad security coverage. For years, the hotel had relied on its legacy analogue video surveillance to supplement the vigilance of its security staff. However, forensic uses of video recordings were extremely tedious and time-consuming.

The hotel’s director of Security and Life Safety John Alan Moore decided the time had come to evaluate advanced video surveillance technology and the capabilities it could bring the hotel and its guests. After investigating a range of current market offerings with its ADT representative, Moore decided an intelligent video solution from ADT’s partner 3VR Security was worthy of the hotel’s investment. 3VR Security founder and chairman Stephen Russell said 3VR’s surveillance search technology offers ‘Google-like’ search capabilities, enabling Moore and his team to search what is often a deluge of surveillance video in about a tenth the time it would take with standard DVRs. Depending on their needs, customers hone their searches with advanced video analytics, such as facial recognition, licence plate recognition, advanced motion analytics, point-of-sale integration, ATM integration, access control and radio frequency identification (RFID) integration.

The Hilton Americas-Houston now helps guests locate more than 7000 lost items each year with 3VR’s colour, directional and object search capabilities. A guest’s misplaced suitcase can usually be found almost instantly by searching based on colour, object and movement while on the property.

Facial surveillance technology used to recognise the resort’s frequent customers, so that the hotel staff can provide service based on their guests’ preferences. 3VR’s facial surveillance registers faces with a reported 90% accuracy, helping to virtually eliminate false positive associated with older video surveillance platforms.

The hotel also uses 3VR to count arriving vehicles, which helps determine peak times for staffing and monitors vehicle accidents in the garage area to reduce liability from potentially fraudulent claims. “This is a whole class of investigations that customers in the past might have written off because of the time and money involved in solving them,” Russell said.

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