Video Surveillance in Schools Does More than Save Lives

Schools, regardless of size, grade range, or location are home to some of our most precious resources: children, teachers, and educational support staff. These institutions are the heart of our communities, yet they often lack sufficient protection, leaving campuses vulnerable to external threats and hostile or prohibited behaviors committed by students. This article explores how AI-powered video surveillance can enhance security in schools through real-time monitoring, intelligent incident detection, and rapid response utilizing AI Video Analytics.

Enhancing School Security for Peace of Mind

As educational institutions increasingly become targets of armed threats, administrators face the challenge of ensuring safety while maintaining a welcoming learning environment. Students and teachers should be able to focus on education, free from the fear of violence.

However, equipping every school with a law enforcement presence is neither feasible nor affordable for most districts. Furthermore, this approach is often reactive, as a single school resource officer (SRO) cannot be everywhere at once. An increased police presence, even if possible, may also contribute to a sense of unease among students by implying an unsafe environment.

A solution that offers unobtrusive and continuous campus monitoring is needed—one that enhances security measures and incident response while fostering a peaceful atmosphere conducive to learning. This solution comes in the form of AI-enabled video surveillance, which can be integrated with a school’s existing CCTV camera network.

Identify and Respond to Security Events Before Escalation

AI-powered video surveillance in schools saves lives by providing automated alerts which can increase reaction times when an armed intruder is detected. It also contributes to a safer environment by identifying unwanted or unusual student behaviors as they happen. The AI Video Analytics Platform transforms passive CCTV systems into proactive tools that help schools identify and respond to threats before they escalate.

The platform provides comprehensive surveillance, rapid incident response, and real-time monitoring across the entire campus. From enhancing perimeter security and watching building entrances to detecting aggressive actions in hallways and classrooms, smoking in the bathrooms, or loitering in parking lots, the system uses advanced AI and machine learning to analyze CCTV video streams as events unfold. The platform triggers alerts based on behaviors and rules determined by the customer to help quickly dispatch security officers to de-escalate any situation.

The platform extracts metadata from real-time video streams to transform raw video data into actionable insights faster than humanly possible, revolutionizing video surveillance with analytics.

From that metadata the system generates alarms for specific behaviors and events as specified by the school. The platform offers dozens of predefined “AI rules” that can be programmed for each camera. These rules can be customized to each camera’s position on campus. The software supports up to 32 different rules per camera, and the platform is scalable and adaptable to support any size school and any number of cameras.

The Power of AI Video Surveillance in Schools

Key areas of focus and examples of AI rules for cameras installed on school campuses include:

Campus perimeters. Auto tracking PTZ (Pan/Tilt/Zoom) cameras adjust their field of view to focus and follow moving objects as they approach. AI rules here include intruder detection, weapons detection, crowd control, and license plate recognition.
Staff entrances. Facial recognition and Person of Interest (POI) detection paired with physical access controls ensure only authorized personnel gain access to buildings.
Student entrances. Monitor for aggressive behaviors, weapons, and detect large-scale movements that might indicate panic during peak traffic periods like arrival, lunchtime, or dismissal.
Classrooms and hallways. AI rules enabled inside the school include the watching for aggressive behaviors, people counting and heat maps for overcrowding alerts, mass movement/panic alerts, as well as smoke, fire, and weapons detection.
Parking lots. Scan for illegally parked or abandoned vehicles in faculty and student lots, cars speeding or traveling in the wrong direction, and ensure access roads to the school are clear for emergency services.
Student pick-up & drop-off zones. Manage crowd control and monitor behaviors when students congregate at school bus boarding and parent pick-up/drop-off areas.

Safeguard Educational Facilities with Computer Vision & AI Video Analytics

AI Video Analytics enhances the effectiveness of video surveillance in educational settings by offering the following benefits:

Comprehensive visibility. Continuous monitoring of the entire campus, including the perimeter grounds, athletic fields, hallways, classrooms, and every entrance to all buildings for proactive response to external threats.
Rapid threat detection and response. Get immediate alerts to smoke, fire, accidents, or aggressive behaviors. Monitor hallways for congestion and detect the presence of drugs or weapons.
Crowd management. Whether for a fire drill, school play, or football game, manage events effectively by deploying resources where needed to direct traffic and maintain crowd control.
Staff optimization. Immediately dispatch security officers to confirmed events while leveraging the intelligence of AI to minimize false alarms and unnecessary deployments.
Predictability. Use the power of AI-driven analytics to identify patterns and trends to plan for increased manpower requirements at future events.
Searchability. Track suspicious individuals or objects and look for missing students across multiple cameras, whether searching by appearance, time, or license plate.In fact, the platform offers facial recognition technology to analyze thousands of faces with exceptional accuracy. Schools choosing this service can upload the images of all students, faculty, and staff to a database of individuals allowed on campus. If an unrecognized face is detected – whether welcome guest or intruder – the software can alert authorities. Further, schools can upload a pre-defined watch list to amplify the software’s facial recognition capabilities by looking for known offenders. Learn more about AIR’s facial recognition technology here.
Post-incident investigation. Advanced forensic search tools allow for rapid retrieval and analysis of video footage to ensure swift incident resolution or gather critical evidence for authorities.

For school administrators, AIR provides a AI Video Analytics Platform that checks the boxes for discretion and cost efficiency.

The software includes a centralized dashboard that provides discreet surveillance of the entire campus that can be managed by a smaller team, lowering manpower requirements.
When applied to a school’s existing command center capabilities, campus security teams have a 360° view of all activity with AI-enhanced analytics for real-time alerts from a discreet location. This helps keep officers out of sight or assigned to post until needed, enabling rapid incident response without the stress of an overwhelming police presence.
The system integrates with a school’s existing CCTV cameras and video management systems. The AIR platform is a software-based solution-as-a-service (SaaS) that integrates with existing CCTV infrastructure, leveraging schools’ previous investments in cameras.
On-prem servers process and archive video footage with metadata, reducing hosting costs while maintaining scalability and affordability via a predictable monthly subscription. (Cloud hosting is available as well).

Get a No-Obligation Project Review and Estimate

Our schools are among the most valuable and vulnerable places in our communities. Discover how AI Video Analytics offered by AIR can discreetly and affordably enhance security at your institution. Contact us today to learn more, and an AIR team member will be in touch within 24 hours.