Key Benefits

Meet Demetrius Anderson at the University of Illinois Chicago

The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a well known and regarded research institution, college and medical center, with 16 colleges and a campus that spans over 250 acres in size. Keeping a campus of this size and diversity safe is no easy feat, but for nearly 30 years, Demetrius Anderson has taken on the challenge.

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Demetrius is the Technical and Intelligence Officer for the campus safety office, and oversees the campus police force that is responsible for the security of the entire campus. Over his tenure, he has become increasingly versed in the university's technological needs, particularly in security and surveillance systems, and ultimately chose VOLT AI for its innovative ability to address multiple security challenges on campus at once.

The Challenges of Securing a Diverse Urban Campus

Managing all aspects of security for a campus of the size and scale of the UIC is no easy feat on its surface; but add to that troubles with being able to maintain staffing levels and being the only police force focused on serving the area, and you have quite the challenge.

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Demetrius and his team have to manage campus safety, theft, medical emergencies, and are responsible for parking lot and campus monitoring across the entire 250 acre campus. Maintaining a large enough security staff has proved difficult, causing them to have to frequently rely on third party security providers when staffing is thin.

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Ultimately, Demetrius found volt.ai when looking at the most cutting edge technologies for weapon detection, but he had no idea of the breadth of solutions the software could offer, solving far more problems for him and his team.

Testing Solutions and Deploying VOLT AI

Ultimately the UIC team considered numerous solutions like BriefCam, Omnilert, and Zero Eyes, but each fell short of the needs of the team (learn more about how VOLT stacks up to other solutions here). Ultimately, Demetrius selected VOLT AI due to the algorithms used for weapon detection, and their highly accurate recognition of weapons in various situations without creating false alarms.

"VOLT's software gave us the ability to recognize shape sizes, utilize bounding boxes, and allowed us to be more detail oriented in what we were looking for as a trigger, rather than just recognizing any object taken out of someone’s pocket like other solutions."

• Demetrius Anderson, Technical and Intelligence Officer, UIC

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In addition, VOLT’s behavior analysis features were a big benefit to the UIC team, as most solutions they were evaluating stopped at simple weapon detection. Ultimately, after choosing Volt, UIC got implementation rolling on the most critical 142 streams of their total 3,500 video cameras across campus.

Real-Time is Key: Campus Security Benefits from VOLT AI

As previously mentioned, UIC got much more than they bargained for when initially looking for weapon detection. They found themselves benefiting from a whole host of valuable VOLT AI features that improve student life:

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Advanced Weapons Detection: Peace of mind that a weapon will be recognized in real-time on their campus.

Occupancy Monitoring: This feature allows them to monitor during off-hours, helping to replace the need to activate third-party security companies to do so.

Person Down Detection: By alerting teams to medical emergencies, such as a man who fell in an elevator lobby, VOLT’s system has enabled faster emergency response.

Unusual Behavior Detection: The system alerts security to potential theft by monitoring areas like bike racks and scooter parking for suspicious behavior, common theft spots on campus. This enables real-time incident detection, saving valuable resources on investigations.

Camera Health Monitoring: The team is able to keep the system running smoothly by being alerted when cameras go down, distinguishing between temporary glitches and actual failures.

Extended Dwell Time Alerts: This feature is particularly useful in parking areas, alerting security to potential issues at payment kiosks or attempts to damage gates, a relatively common occurrence that can be costly if not caught in real-time.

Behavior Analysis Without Facial Recognition: The ability to track behaviors and clothing descriptions without relying on facial recognition technology, which helps address privacy concerns.

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A Match Made in Campus Security Heaven

Demetrius and the university police team at UIC have been more than happy with their implementation of VOLT AI, realizing far more benefits than they originally expected from crime prevention to cost reduction. Together we’ll continue to keep UIC safe and secure for years to come, continuing to expand coverage across all cameras on campus.

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