Calipsa survey shows video monitoring centers surviving COVID-19

Nov. 25, 2020
Nearly half of respondents report increased business during pandemic

Ashburn, Va. – November 19, 2020 – Owners and managers of video monitoring centers have generally fared well during the COVID-19 pandemic, with nearly half increasing business according to a recent international survey conducted by Calipsa, a market-leading provider of deep-learning powered video analytics for false alarm reduction.

The Calipsa Video Monitoring Report 2020 found 47% of respondents said the pandemic had stimulated business growth, providing an average 33% increase in clients and a 30% boost in revenue. More than a third (37%) of businesses reported no change in performance, while 16% said their operations had declined.

With input from over 50 security businesses located in 15 countries on six continents, survey data was conducted between Aug. 11 and Oct. 13, 2020. The report was shared during the recent second annual Calipsa Masterclass, an online virtual event offering sessions exploring the challenges and opportunities facing video monitoring centers.

Brian Baker, vice president, Americas, Calipsa, said the stations’ manager reported virus-related challenges, including accommodating remote working, finding qualified employees and managing false alarms. False alarms have long been a problem for video monitoring stations.

“On average, our respondents reported half (49%) of the alarms they receive are false,” Baker said. “This means that for every genuine alarm that needs urgent attention, there is likely to be a false one taking up valuable time.”

Virtually all video monitoring stations reported using intelligent analytics technology to identify false alarms and intercept them, preventing them from clogging up a human monitoring operators’ workflow. About 9 in 10 stations reported that video analytics helped improve their response times, primarily due to significant reductions in false alarm rates.

According to the survey, Calipsa’s artificial intelligence-based cloud platform outperformed other products to reduce false alarms.  Calipsa users saw false alarms reduced by more than 60%; users of products from different providers reported reductions of 48.5%.

“With this and other benefits, many AI adopters are now also AI advocates,” said Baker. “When asked if they would recommend AI video analytics to clients or colleagues, 71% said they would.”

Calipsa’s false alarm reduction technology uses artificial intelligence with deep learning technology to filter out false alarms with a 99.5% accuracy rate. Calipsa’s technology recognizes genuine alarms caused by human or vehicle movement, while filtering out notifications resulting from nuisance factors such as animals, lighting, weather or foliage. 

Click here to view the entire Calipsa Video Monitoring Report 2020.