Four Ways to Boost University Safety

Ensuring the safety of both students and staff is a top priority for university control room teams. With the rise of innovative security and surveillance technologies, universities can proactively address potential safety risks and respond swiftly to incidents.

Here are four key ways in which these advanced tools can improve campus safety.

Harness AI

AI can proactively monitor footage for potential safety risks, from spotting signs of antisocial behaviour (loitering, rapid crowd formation, etc.) to suspicious objects, cars driving erratically, and known persons of interest.

It can also detect safety risks. For example, it triggers an alert whenever a lone individual walks through the campus area at night, prioritising this video feed for operators until the individual reaches a more populated area. Another example is detecting human movement in high-risk areas such as rooftops or where dangerous equipment may be stored or used.

AI tools can also spot patterns and trends to inform decisions about campus security, such as highlighting hot spots by incident type. Strategies can be developed to help, such as changing security patrol routes or improving lighting.

Integrate Help Points

Control rooms must be able to communicate with individuals needing assistance and with field-based personnel best placed to help them.

Consider integrating campus help points so that any time a button is pressed, audio and visual footage for wellbeing checks are prioritised for operators, accompanied with exact location data for dispatching any help required.

Go Mobile

With remote access and mobile applications, incident location data – along with live video footage and other pertinent data – can be sent to the mobile devices of field-based campus security officers so that they know where to go and what to expect. They can also use their mobile devices, radios, and bodycam footage to update central teams.

Build Workflows

Workflows tailored to a university’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) generate on-screen guidance for operators based on live data received so that the correct decision is always made, even in emergencies.

You can also use workflows to automate safety measures, from triggering campus evacuation protocols (audio alarms and announcements, zone lockdowns etc.) to personnel dispatch scenarios like the help point example mentioned.

Automated workflows can also be utilised to enforce ‘non-emergency’ safety protocols, for example, to guide control room operators through virtual security patrols of key areas on campus at specific times of the day.