Non-Profit Adopts Intrusion Detection Solution

​Johannesburg, South Africa, is a city plagued by burglaries, home invasions, car hijackings, and theft. Police resources are stretched, and private security guards—once the norm at gated communities and affluent neighborhoods—are less affordable as wages have increased in line with a fair pay policy. 

Challenges. Community Active Protection (CAP) was founded as a non-profit organization in 2006 in response to the high levels of crime in Johannesburg. CAP has taken a proactive approach to crime prevention, recruiting highly capable teams to patrol streets and motivating citizens to report suspicious activity to CAP’s Command Center, a state-of-the-art control room that fields all calls and dispatches CAP Tactical Units. The CAP initiative has proven extremely effective, reducing crime in monitored areas by a reported 80 to 90 percent. 

Additionally, in response to customer demand for reactive armed guards, CAP created an off-site monitoring service in 2016 called CAP Smart Guard, which is deployed primarily at and around gated residences, as well as private homes, using privately owned cameras connected to the CAP network. 

Solution. CAP was seeking an intrusion detection solution for the Smart Guard service to increase the level of protection and response offered to its customers. It turned to Agent Video Intelligence’s (Agent Vi) innoVi Remote Guarding software as a service (SaaS) to receive accurate and automatic detections of security breaches at the remote sites that CAP monitors. 

Cameras at the remote sites are connected to the service via innoVi Edge, a compact appliance preloaded with Agent Vi’s video analytics software, where initial video analysis is performed. InnoVi Edge connects any ONVIF/RTSP IP camera to innoVi Core (a server hosted in the Agent Vi data center) for high-level processing and data analysis.  

CAP defines events of interest, including intruders entering private property, movement in sterile zones, and cars stopped in unauthorized areas. When an event is detected, innoVi generates an alert that is sent to CAP’s Command Center and displayed in its Milestone XProtect video management software, along with an event clip that provides video verification of the security breach. The alerts and clips are viewed by the CAP Command Center operators in the XProtect Smart Client. At the same time, an image may be sent by CAP’s control room operators to the client’s mobile device. Operators quickly review the clip and decide on the best course of action.  

CAP is also employing Agent Vi’s Deep Learning-driven Anomaly Detection capability. Agent Vi’s Deep Learning infrastructure trains on millions of real-life images taken from surveillance video built over 15 years of Agent Vi’s data collection. Based on this, the algorithm knows to classify different target types (for example, person, car, or object). Once connected to a CAP camera, the Anomaly Detection algorithm learns the specific scene and familiarizes itself with normal patterns and expected behavior. The Anomaly Detection capability can then identify and alert the Command Center to events that are out of the ordinary.    

Results. CAP executives say the organization is highly satisfied with innoVi’s technology, performance, and business model. “We’re finding that innoVi’s performance at the property line is significantly better than other systems we’ve used,” says CAP Chief Operating Officer Sean Jammy. “And that’s in complex environments like streets, gates, and the like.”  

Having tested several other solutions, Jammy says the Agent Vi solution stood out against products that returned a high level of false alerts. “This is the best analytics product we’ve seen. Almost all of the alerts we receive are accurate,” he notes. 

Agent Vi’s innoVi is camera-agnostic, able to connect through innoVi Edge to any ONVIF/RTSP IP camera, with no need to replace existing cameras, leading to a savings in time and money.

CAP says the solution has helped stop crime before it happens. “Our biggest success so far with innoVi is that not one of our monitored sites has experienced an incident of crime at the property line,” Jammy notes. “This is thanks to multiple interventions by the CAP team, following innoVi detections and alerts.” 

Another indicator of success for CAP is a high level of customer satisfaction. “We’re giving our clients a service that is more effective, significantly less expensive than a dedicated 24-hour guard, and doesn’t escalate in cost,” Jammy says. “Plus, a human guard doesn’t include a perimeter detection solution.” 

These continual learning and enhancement processes are key to achieving the best results, Jammy adds. “Our success will be measured in providing an effective, sustainable solution over a long period.” 

Roni Kresner is marketing manager of Agent Video Intelligence (Agent Vi).

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