The surveillance industry has changed. Surveillance has gone mobile with edge devices and mesh networks. No longer are surveillance cameras fixed in one place. They are now increasingly deployed on moving devices. Drones circle miles of agriculture fields. Law enforcement agencies equip their police officers with body-worn cameras.
Surveillance reports state for 2017, 98 million network surveillance cameras will be shipped globally through professional sales channels. Close to 29 million HD CCTV surveillance cameras will be shipped globally, and 400K body worn cameras to be shipped to law enforcement agencies. A leading market research firm projects that the video surveillance market will grow from $30.37B in 2016 to $75.64B by 2022 at a CAGR of 15.4% from 2017 to 2022.
This growth in the surveillance industry can be attributed to both a sharp decline in component costs and technology advances made possible by edge computing and mesh networks. Edge devices such as body-worn cameras and drones have changed the way industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, emergency response, and security keep tabs on what’s happening.
Surveillance cameras are getting smaller, while the data they capture is growing larger. So what’s enabling these new edge devices to capture all of this data? The ability to store data at the edge.
NAND Flash technology allows IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) industry applications such as video surveillance to capture and store video at the edge, directly onto a camera. This enables better performance, high capacity, endurance and rapid response to security issues.
[TWEET “What’s enabling IIoT Surveillance at the Edge?”]
Surveillance data captures huge volumes of data – from multiple cameras operating at high speeds and high resolutions. All this data needs a high bandwidth communications infrastructure to move that data to servers. The storage server also needs to be high capacity with a high bandwidth communications network to accept the data.
Surveillance data is critical and needs to be up 24×7. Back-up storage must be in place so you can continue to monitor activity even if there’s an outage in the communications or electrical systems. Local battery backups and on-camera storage options are also necessary.
A high flying drone needs storage in a small form factor, but still requires high capacity to capture the high-volume of data that surveillance produces. Not only do drones store flight data, but they are also capturing high-quality video and images. It doesn’t make sense to strap on bulky memory solutions for a flight overhead.
Remote control on-device storage requires high local capacity, so an isolated camera can continue to capture high-definition (HD) content for days while consuming very little power. Withstanding extreme temperatures and humidity might also be necessary, so the storage components in drone surveillance equipment must be designed to perform with the environment in mind—especially if running outdoors or in adverse conditions.
Finally, all of the data captured must eventually be sent up to the cloud for archival. In this case surveillance servers at the edge are still needed to capture and retain fresh data. They also help consolidate and manage the flow of data to the cloud for analysis when rapid response is needed. For example, if analysis is needed on the last six hours of captured video to see where a child went missing in a park, quick access to that data is critical. If edge servers are buffering the most recent 24 to 48 hours of video, there is now instant access to that important data, which of course is much, much faster than downloading a huge volume of video from the cloud.
Edge servers don’t have to be large, bulky systems that live in a remote data center. Local storage at the edge using NAND Flash provides an optimal combination of performance, power-use efficiency, and environmental durability. Storing surveillance data on NAND Flash devices allows access to data at the moment it’s needed for real-time response.
Western Digital will be exhibiting at IFSEC International for Surveillance, stand #28099, from June 20 to 22 in Excel, London. Please visit our stand to learn how we enable the growth and transformation of the surveillance industry with the most complete portfolio of edge to cloud storage solutions.
The show hours are:
June 20, Tuesday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
June 21, Wednesday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
June 22, Thursday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm
If you’d like to make an appointment with one of our experts, please email OEMProducts@SanDisk.com