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Solutions by typeIntrusion detection

Who is in there at an hour when nobody should be?

At this hour nobody should be in here

10:50 p.m. in a factory that is still running. A forklift crosses the aisle with a pallet and there are people working at two machines. By the column, somebody has opened an electrical panel door and is half inside it. There’s no scheduled work on that panel tonight, and nobody has noticed: at that hour everyone is watching their own machine and the aisle is just the place you walk through.

18 cameras across 10 sectors

This is how you ask for it

«Tell me if anyone opens an electrical panel outside a scheduled job.»

If it goes well, nobody ever finds out and tomorrow there is a breaker tripped that nobody can explain. If it goes badly, there’s somebody working on live equipment at night, with no permit and with nobody knowing they are there. Either way you end up with the same thing: a panel opened with no record, a fault you can’t reconstruct, and an awkward conversation with a maintenance technician who swears it wasn’t him.

You decide once

You decide this once, and what you decide is the clock. You say which areas must be empty and during which hours, which days are different —holidays, plant shutdowns, weekends— and who gets told in each slot: on level -3 of the parking lot, from eleven at night to six in the morning, any person or car standing still is an alert to the guard. IRIS applies that every night, Christmas Eve included, with nobody having to remember the calendar.

After hours doesn’t mean at night. It means at an hour when that particular thing shouldn’t be happening. In a factory running three shifts there are people at eleven at night and that’s normal; what isn’t normal is a panel standing open at that hour that nobody asked to open. Every place has its own clock, and that clock is what turns an ordinary scene into something worth a look.

The problem is that nobody can carry two hundred clocks in their head. The operator facing a wall of screens can’t tell, from an image, whether that door may be open at this hour or whether there’s a planned shutdown in that area today. And after hours is when there are fewest people to notice: fewer staff, fewer rounds, more empty space. The hour that needs the most cover is the one that has the least.

IRIS can carry two hundred clocks, because it doesn’t get tired and doesn’t mind that it’s Sunday. It looks at each area with the schedule you gave it and speaks up when something happens outside it, with the camera and the video. It doesn’t say anyone is doing anything wrong, nor does it imply it: it says that at three fifteen there is a person in a place where you said nobody should be at that hour, and it lets somebody look. Almost always there is an explanation and one call settles it. The one without an explanation is the one you were looking for.

What changes

Before, after-hours activity turned up the next morning, if it turned up at all: a door left open, a tripped breaker, a pile that had grown. Now the alert arrives while it’s happening, with the camera open and the exact time, and whoever receives it decides in twenty seconds whether to go down, call on the radio or just log it. The three o’clock round still exists, but it’s no longer the only way to find out.

Where we have seen it

  • It’s the middle of the night and the square is full: one large group in the center and smaller ones spread around it. There are bottles across the ground, the trash cans are overflowing and the patio at the back is still open.

    CAM-22Night gathering in the square

    «Tell me if people gather in the square above the threshold at night, and how full the trash cans are.»

    See this camera →The city

  • Almost eleven at night. The plant is still producing: a forklift crosses the aisle with a pallet and there are operators at two machines. By the column, somebody has opened the electrical cabinet door and has both hands on the terminal board. The red indicator at the top is lit. There’s no padlock, no tag and nobody else nearby. IRIS sees that this panel is open outside a scheduled intervention.

    CAM-258An electrical panel open at eleven at night

    «Tell me if anybody opens an electrical cabinet outside a scheduled intervention.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • A unit hallway in the small hours. Someone is lying on the floor, on their side, one arm stretched out in front of them. A few feet away an empty wheelchair sits against the wall and, further on, a dressings cart stands unused. The room door is shut and nobody walks past. IRIS sees that there’s a person on the floor and how long they have been there; it doesn’t know who they’re or what happened.

    CAM-118Someone on the hallway floor

    «Tell me as soon as somebody is on the floor of a hallway and stays there, even at four in the morning when nobody walks past.»

    See this camera →The hospital

  • The same crest, at midday. A white van is stopped at an angle against the fence, its nose up against the no-entry sign and the transformer just on the other side of the mesh. One person is sitting at the wheel with the window down, and the rear doors are shut. Nobody else is in frame. IRIS sees a vehicle stopped where nobody stops; it doesn’t read the license plate and doesn’t know whose it is.

    CAM-145A van parked on the dam crest

    «Tell me if a vehicle stays parked on the crest for more than five minutes outside working hours, and tell me if anyone gets out of it.»

    See this camera →Critical infrastructure

  • Three fifteen in the morning, with the yard lights on. A person with no hard hat and no vest has both hands on a valve on the manifold. From that area a black hose runs across the gravel to a flatbed van. There, a second person holds the hose over a white tote loaded on the bed. IRIS sees a valve being operated at that hour and a transfer into a vehicle.

    CAM-339Someone opens a valve at night and fills a tank

    «Tell me if anybody operates a valve on the manifold with no work order open, and all the more so at night.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • Almost four in the morning on level -3. Every space in frame is empty. A gray car is stopped in the aisle, in front of the elevators, without pulling into any space and with its rear lights on. A person is standing by the driver’s door. The metal shutter at the back is down. IRIS doesn’t say what’s going on: it says there’s a vehicle stopped outside a space and activity at an hour when the level should be empty.

    CAM-472A car stopped outside a space on a floor that should be empty

    «Alert me if there is anyone or any car stopped on the closed levels outside opening hours.»

    See this camera →Parking lots

  • Six in the evening. The entrance barrier is down. A white van has stopped outside the site with both rear doors open, and someone is unloading household waste and stacking it against the fence: washing machines, boards, an armchair, rubble and black bags. A hundred feet away, inside, are the dumpsters where that material could be left at no cost. IRIS sees a vehicle stopped outside the tipping area and items piling up on the ground.

    CAM-426The pile is growing on the wrong side of the fence

    «Alert me if anyone unloads material outside the site, on the shoulder or against the fence, in or out of opening hours.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • A restricted compound at dusk, the yard already empty. A drone crosses the top of the wall above the razor wire, carries a package slung underneath and throws a circle of light onto the paving. Below, the vehicle gate is shut, there’s light in the booth and a service car has just pulled up in the street. IRIS doesn’t say who is flying that drone or from where. It says there’s an object flying inside a space where nothing may fly and that it has dropped a package in the yard, and it says so while it’s happening.

    CAM-564Something crosses the wall from above and drops a package inside

    «Give me a red alert if something flies over the wall outside service hours.»

    See this camera →Public safety

  • Mid-morning at the reservoir the drinking water comes from. Away to the right the water is still blue. In front of the intake tower it isn’t: a thick green mat covers the whole shoreline and curls in swirls right up to the intake screens. Two technicians in hard hats and safety vests look at it from the walkway. The camera sees the color and how far it has spread. Whether there’s a toxin in it can’t be seen: that’s for the laboratory.

    CAM-416The intake reservoir woke up green

    «Tell me if the water in front of the intake changes color or if a mat appears on the surface.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • The school’s pedestrian gate, open mid-morning. An adult steps through it without stopping at the front office; behind the railings, the schoolyard with the students at recess. IRIS does not know who that person is or why they are there. All it knows is that someone came through the gate at an hour when the school keeps it closed.

    CAM-138Someone comes in outside access hours

    «Tell me if someone comes through the gate outside the arrival and pick-up slots we have set, so that someone from the front desk can go down and see what is going on.»

    See this camera →The school

What it doesn’t do

IRIS does not know whether that person is allowed to be there: it recognizes no faces and does not hold your shift roster unless you give it. It sees somebody in an area at an hour when you said nobody should be, and it says so.

That is why the alert is a question, not an accusation. Most of the time it is a technician who came in to fix something and told nobody, and ten seconds of video settles it.

Questions

What if someone is allowed to be there at night?
Then the rule knows, if you tell it. The schedule takes exceptions: an open work order, a planned shutdown, an extra shift. While that exception is live, the area raises no alert, and when it closes the area protects itself again. And even if an alert fires for no reason, nothing bad happens: it comes with the video, somebody looks for ten seconds and closes it. An after-hours alert accuses nobody; it just asks somebody to confirm.
Is this not already covered by access control?
It covers doors with a reader, and in most sites that is a small part of the place. There’s no reader on the crest of a dam, in the tank yard, on the roof of a vessel, on level -3 of a parking lot or on the shoulder outside the fence. And where there’s one, the reader knows the door was opened, not what happened next. IRIS watches the place, not the door, and that’s why it sees what goes on everywhere without a reader.
Does it work for vehicles too, not just people?
Yes, and often the vehicle is the clearest signal. A van standing at a gate in the small hours, a loaded truck leaving by a track instead of going over the truck scale, a car sitting still in a closed lane: all of that shows up better and sooner than a person, because a vehicle is big and doesn’t hide. The rule is written the same way: where, during which hours, how many minutes standing, and who to tell.
Does it work at night, with the light there is?
It depends on the camera and on the light at that spot, which is why it gets checked before an area is signed off. You look at that camera at three in the morning, with the lighting that is actually there at that hour, not the one in the brochure. Plenty of outdoor cameras see well at night and others see nothing beyond the light pole. When an area can’t be seen, the honest answer is to say so and fix the light or the camera, not to sell a rule that won’t hold.

See all the questions

The real interface, step by step

A camera looks. IRIS understands what it sees.

An extract of the real screen, no voice-over and hands-free. Each round poses another situation. What sits behind it is a good deal bigger than what you see.

  1. It lands in the tray
  2. You open it
  3. You confirm or dismiss
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These words are the ones we have built, not the ones IRIS understands. The list falls short on purpose: you ask for it in a sentence, and sentences don’t run out. Tell us what is in front of your cameras and we’ll tell you whether it understands it, or not yet.

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And the best part

What holds on camera oneholds on camera four thousand, with nothing to copy by hand.

A rule is stated once and applies everywhere. And it says the same thing on Sunday night as on Tuesday morning, whoever is on call.

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