we have developed and optimized security solutions for parking garages that can help the retail sector to regain strength after a heartfelt crisis.
In the business world of the United States, the phrase " no parking, no business " is used a lot . And it is true. The impact on the turnover of a business has a direct relationship with the ease of parking the vehicle, especially in the world of retail.
It is therefore very common for large businesses and shopping centers to have large parking lots that are totally free, with several hours exonerated or paid.
The parking lot is the place where the user experience begins when visiting the store or shopping center, and the correct management and optimization of this resource has a great impact on that experience.
As an access route to the shopping center, the car park is an ideal point both for establishing security measures and for collecting important data for marketing departments.
Solutions
In the retail field, and specifically the management of its car parks, Neural Labs has been providing solutions for years that help address the following problems:
· Capacity control
· Prevention of entry of vehicles reported as "conflictive"
· Management of Notices to VIP clients
· Preventing fraudulent claims for vehicle damage
· Management / statistics of stay times
· Support in the resolution of incidents in the commercial center
· Data collection and analysis for customer segmentation, marketing, etc.
Implementation of these solutions Architecture
we propose the installation of cameras that capture vehicle characteristics at all entrances, exits and sub-areas that you want to monitor.
Through their technology, these CCTV Cameras will collect the following data from each vehicle that enters:
· Registration (vital to individualize each access)
· Vehicle brand (very useful in marketing)
· Vehicle Color
· Vehicle type
· Direction of the vehicle (in bi-directional lanes)
· Vehicle country
· Date and time of entry or exit
These can be conventional IP CCTV camera (Hikvision, Varito, Dahua, etc.). They only need to be previously validated by Neural Labs consultants to ensure that they fit the scenario to be controlled.
The use of these standard cameras, which can be purchased locally, is one of the keys to reducing the cost of the solution, without any loss of performance.
In the event that you want to know the detail of occupation by floors or parking areas, additional cameras must be installed at the entrances to those areas.
Detail of the solutions
1. Capacity control
Through the recognition of license plates in all entrances, exits and sub-zones, global gauges are monitored at all times as well as each one of the zones (by floors, for example).
In this way, the parking manager will at all times have a vision of how both the global capacity and the capacity by zones are. With the installation of cameras at the entrances and exits of the zones, the system could even guide the driver to the zones where there are free spaces.
In addition, the system knows the exact list of vehicles that are in the car park at all times, the time they have been inside, as well as the area in which they are parked. In the event of any incident, it is very important to know if a vehicle is parked in the mall or shop. For example, when suspected of terrorism, abandonment of stolen cars, etc.
The system stores historical capacity data to be able to make statistics or distributions a posteriori.
2. Prevention of entry of vehicles reported as "conflictive"
The solution allows the creation of unlimited lists, as well as the automatic import of these from other systems. One of the most common uses is to create a list of “suspicious” vehicles to which you can add criminals who have already caused problems in the past.
These lists are very useful for the security personnel of the mall who will receive an alert if any of these vehicles tries to enter.
3. Management of notices to VIP clients
With the same list management, you can create a list of clients that require special treatment or attention, such as personalities, managers or VIP clients.
Regardless of the list in which the vehicle is detected (repeat thieves, VIP clients, etc.), the system allows the sending of alerts by WhatsApp to security personnel outside the control center.
4. Prevention of fraudulent claims for damage to the vehicle
The establishments that charge the customer for parking must be held responsible for external damage suffered by the vehicles inside; This opens up the possibility of false damage claims.
The most common solution to this problem is the installation of side cameras that record the state of the vehicle when it enters.
These recordings can be managed by a VMS (Milestone, Hanwha, Vast2, etc.) and indexed by license plate recognition.
The practical effect is that, before a claim, it is enough to enter the license plate in the VMS and you will have access to the video fragments where it appears, in order to verify the damages reported by the client.
The installation of a VMS is not strictly necessary, since the Neural Labs solution is capable of making small video clips of evidence with these additional cameras.
However, its implementation is highly recommended, as it enriches the global solution by adding video management capabilities to Neural Labs' video analytics capabilities.
Management of stay time statistics
The Neural Labs solution for retail allows to know the times of permanence of the clients in the car park. This data is extremely important for:
· Knowing the average time of permanence of the clients in the establishment, in short, to better know the clients and their habits
· Detect illegal parking lots of people who use free retail parking lots for other purposes, such as:
·
o Go to work. The system, for example, could detect that this vehicle parks Monday through Friday from 8 am to 5 pm
o Go shopping at other nearby establishments that either do not have parking or charge for it
o Arrive from outside the city and leave the vehicle in the retail parking lot to take public transport and make arrangements, etc.
· It also allows to have statistics and distributions of these times of stay in a historical way to analyze the evolution in these
· Support for the resolution of incidents in the shopping center or shop
· All vehicle data detected at the entrances and exits are stored for your consultation
· In the event of an incident in the establishment such as a robbery, you can search the historical data stored by:
·
o Registration or part of it
o Vehicle color
o Vehicle brand
o Vehicle type (van, passenger car, motorcycle, etc.)
o Time slot
For example, you could search for black vehicles, Nissan brand, tourism, whose registration ends in 033, that left the establishment on a specific day between 5 pm and 6 pm
These types of incident investigations allow the person responsible to be caught, denied access, or generated a warning if they try to return to the mall.
Historical data has multiple applications and is consulted for a myriad of reasons.
Data collection and analysis for customer segmentation, marketing, etc.
solution collects vehicle data such as brand, color and type, information that is very useful for understanding customers and for segmentation.
At the moment the vehicle enters the shopping center, segmented advertising can be presented based on said data. The advertising in this case would be for one of the establishments in the shopping center.
Analyzing this data in the historical database can help create a profile of the typical merchant customer and measure the impact of campaigns to attract certain types of customers.
VMS support
Neural Labs solutions are integrated with a wide number of VMS's (Milestone, BVMS, VAST2, Wave, Avigilon, Indigo Vision, etc.)
This allows you to add the license plate recognition cameras and the auditing cameras to the existing VMS in the trade.
The solution indexes all vehicle features and alerts in the VMS system and allows quick access to recordings with a simple license plate search.
The combination of the two technologies makes the solution for retail more complete, taking into account that in most facilities there is already a VMS recording the security cameras of the trade.
Centralization of data
solution allows you to operate both centrally and decent rally. Every mall, trade, etc. You can send the data to a central server where all the data from all the businesses is unified.
This is especially useful in chains of shopping centers, food, etc., since it allows a global vision of the state of the establishments at the same time that statistics and consolidated statistics can be extracted, as well as comparisons between shopping centers, etc.
It is also possible to centralize the management of some lists of dangerous or VIP vehicles that can be downloaded automatically by all shopping centers, so that the entire network of shops could share lists of common interest.
Combination with other analytics and systems
The combination with facial recognition Time Attendance Machine, for example, closes the circle of the solution in the field of security.
With Neural Labs solutions, parking is controlled and the entry of vehicles reported as dangerous is prevented; with facial recognition, the same would apply to access for people.
These two technologies complement each other to improve the security of shopping centers, for example.
Many establishments have a PSIM (Physical Security Information Management) system that unifies the management of the different security systems. Integration with these is of vital importance in order to provide a single operating platform.
Conclusions
The retail is not going through good times. Also, in the United States there is already talk of “retail apocalypse”. And the strong competition from companies like Amazon is wearing down this sector that is trying to reinvent itself.
The application of all these solutions affects the improvement of the customer experience —something very necessary at this time of uncertainty for the sector— and allows obtaining highly useful information for the business or shopping center.