The heartbreaking recent mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga. has once again turned the spotlight to the problem of gun violence and school shootings in the United States. The suspect in the attack, a 14-year-old student at the school, killed two students and two teachers and wounded nine before surrendering to school officials.
While authorities were still sorting out details of the horrific act, the incident once again underlines the importance of public safety technology and weapons detection systems. Reports have suggested the school had recently installed an emergency alarm system that, along with locked classroom doors, may have mitigated the tragedy.
In this post, we’ll discuss the presence of threat assessment and gun detection systems in America and their impact on addressing active shooter incidents.
Traditional workplace safety measures
An effective modern weapons detection system uses a combination of hardware, such as video cameras, sensors and panic buttons, with software that can detect firearms, knives, explosives and other weapons.
Traditionally, workplace security measures centered around the use of metal detectors, surveillance cameras and manual inspections, using pat-downs or hand-held wands or other metal-detector devices. But those legacy technologies and tactics are labor-intensive, and they have proved to be of limited use in thwarting the emerging nature of real-time mass shooting threats.
Surveillance cameras are helpful in recording events and can aid in active shooter detection, but on their own, they have no ability to generate real-time data for use in analytics. Using metal detectors and pat-downs may be useful at main entrances but are of no help when an assailant finds an alternative entry point, such as an open window or a back door.
The biggest downfall of these traditional methods is that they work separately, not in concert with each other. There is no real-time sharing of data, so there’s no easy way for law enforcement personnel to analyze threats as they unfold.
Modern emergency alert systems
Increasingly, facility operators are adding new equipment such as X-ray machines, thermal imaging cameras, and onsite panic button systems to increase workplace safety. They’re also turning to artificial intelligence.
AI-powered weapon detection systems bring the ability to scan live surveillance footage using deep learning algorithms for the presence of firearms. Once they identify a weapon, these systems send out an alert to notify security personnel so they can quickly respond.
While the AI in these systems continuously learns and improves in accuracy, the risk is that they mistake harmless ordinary objects for firearms, creating false alarms and undermining trust in the gun detection system. Other issues, including poor lighting, background noise, and poor video quality, can also increase the risk of errors in detecting threats.
It highlights the importance of finding a solution with AI that has been trained extensively on images and videos, so they can accurately confirm the presence of a weapon or identify a blacklisted person.
Weapon detection systems are further improved when they are integrated as part of a digital network, which capture real-time data from detectors and cameras.
The SOS Technologies platform, SmartSOSTM, combines many of these features.
It starts with our EagleEyeTM technology, which employs best-in-class AI-powered recognition of blacklisted people, intruders, active shooters and weapons. It features 99.84% facial identification accuracy based on testing by the NIST, and it integrates with most video camera management systems.
Once a wireless panic button is activated, a signal is routed via an offsite cell tower directly to the appropriate 911 dispatch center, eliminating the need to call 911 and dramatically reducing the time needed to trigger a response.
The platform also can send real-time video streaming, integrated floor plans and other information directly to first responders and security personnel, giving them valuable intelligence to bring them up to speed on what’s happening and inform their response. It also integrates with access control systems, such as automatic door locks, plus public announcement systems, digital signage, smartphones and other IoT devices.
The troubling trend of mass shootings and fatalities outlines the need for effective school and workplace security solutions to ensure public safety. Contact SOS Technologies today to learn how we can help improve security and reduce mass shooting incidents.