Security opportunities in town centres
Video transcript:
Hello, my name is Buzz Coates, Norbain’s Security Solutions Specialist
and today in our third video of our marketing opportunities,
I'm going to talk about town centres.
As we all know, over the last five years,
town centres have had quite a challenging time.
Not only have we seen an increase in online retail sales,
which really hasn't helped the town centres,
but also from a point of view of the COVID restrictions, etc, etc.
We've had some challenging times there for town centres.
But with challenging times comes opportunities.
and that's what we're here to talk about today.
And what we are seeing with the closures of retailers,
we're actually seeing an increase in the use of premises for hospitality.
And in addition to this, recently I've been involved
with a couple of town centres who are really trying to establish
and reinvent the way that they do their business on a day to day basis.
And that could include music events, festivals, etc, etc.
by attracting people into the town
that maybe normally wouldn't come to the town.
It's very important for those town centres
to make sure that people visiting the town have a good experience,
because obviously, they want those events to be successful,
and obviously people to come back.
I think there's no surprise here that a lot of town centres
still do run on analogue based CCTV systems.
This in turn creates golden opportunities for you
because you could obviously take them to latest technologies,
upgrade into IP CCTV,
and all the benefits that come from that, ie with analytics.
One of the pain points for town centres is the use of leased lines,
which can be quite expensive.
So here we do see town centres moving to mesh wireless networks,
which makes it a damn sight easier and less costly
for those who move away from that technology.
Obviously, because we have had coax or twisted pair there for some time,
there will be maybe hesitation saying
“Oh, can we move or can we upgrade?”
You can because that coax or twisted pair technology
can still be used today by using receivers or transceivers
on either side of the current analogue equipment that you've got in
and moving up then to what would be an IP system.
So the adoption of using the existing cable,
or then and an addition moving to wireless networks,
I can obviously make the upgrade more affordable.
So once we move up to a wireless IP system, we'll make it Ethernet,
we can then obviously use the advantages
of higher definition resolution cameras,
we can then also bring in body worn cameras
that may be used by staff at events,
or maybe staff that actually go out and patrol the streets
on behalf of the council.
And obviously, once we have moved to the IP network,
we could then introduce audio.
So it could well be you have intercoms,
or you want to be able to talk to people or announce stuff to people -
you could do that easily.
And then we really start to open up all sorts of efficiency measures,
ie we could have an event on,
and we're counting cars so that we know how many cars we got coming,
we could then temporarily divert those to temporary car parks
instead of using town centre car parks.
At the same time, we could warn drivers that there are events on
and you can say “if you're not coming to the event,
please take the bypass and move off to another area.”
So you don't bring congestion into the town.
You can obviously then add signage, etc, etc.,
or parts of useful information that customers love.
And I think ANPR also is an attraction that town councils will be looking at,
because theres always great ways to make sure
that you can add extra money to your coffers.
And that is things like people parking on box junctions,
or maybe parking violations whereby you can collect money that way.
So I mentioned analytics earlier
but what sort of analytics do we see maybe used in town centres?
Well, you can definitely count in behavioural analysis.
it may well be 6, 7, 8 people congregating on a corner,
you want to flag that as something that might be of interest.
Or maybe that someone is acting suspiciously,
which could also gain interest from operators.
I think without doubt, forensic analytics is something that really appeals
to councils and town centres because they spend a lot of time
trawling through lots and lots of video,
looking for someone maybe wearing a red jacket or driving a red car.
Nowadays, we do have that great facility of where video systems
can give you that functionality of “I want to see a Ford Fiesta”.
“Red. Between this time to that time”.
it will then just bring up all that information for you.
One shoot, you just trawl through
without having to spend hours and hours of information.
Maybe one thing that we will see in the near future
with the electrification of vehicles,
we'll probably might see town centres start to become more pedestrianised
or cycling lanes or maybe electrical bus lanes and things like that.
So, obviously cameras are going to be popping up
here there and everywhere to make sure that those are used
for the right purposes and not the wrong purposes.
And obviously being a cyclist, I think you'll probably see that people
will be encouraged to cycle more to town centres.
But that’s then got to be made safe.
But it also means that there's got to be places
where people can lock their bike safely.
So it could well be that we have something there for pounds
where bikes are locked up.
It may be that you have a QR access code system,
but that's just food for thought.
And obviously, with the electrification,
here's great opportunities there for town centres
to maybe monitor electric vehicles, or non electric vehicles,
and obviously and have that tax there for raising funds.
So as a recap, I think you will see town centres and city centres
maybe trying to look at reinventing themselves
and how they go about attracting people to the town centres in the future.
So if you'd like to find out more,
head over to Norbain TV on YouTube,
or even better, give us a call.