Surveillance cameras, as the name suggests, were meant for security, safety, crime observation, deterring the criminals, and loss prevention purpose only. Organizations also used it majorly for preventive and defensive purposes. But slowly, they came out of their limited domain and evolved to become useful across a wider spectrum of job functions. They also became more difficult to compromise using a malware.
Here are few of the non-security uses of surveillance cameras.
Can Be Used as Live Cams
Surveillance cameras can be used for entertainment, educational, and inspirational purposes. You can travel to amazing places through the lens of these cameras and watch things that are otherwise difficult to capture. The viewers have access to watching incidents like an active volcano from a very close angle by these cams placed at strategic locations.
Construction Sites
They can be used to make time-lapse videos at construction sites. Instead of actually going to the site and surveying the progress in harsh conditions, the executive management, stakeholders, and clients can view it through these time lapse videos.
Understanding Wildlife
These cams are highly beneficial to understand animal behavior and for research purposes. They are placed by wildlife observers near the animal habitats to get an unobtrusive view into their lives, which is otherwise not possible. The awesome clippings of animals that we often see on National Geographic and other similar channels are the result of these cam recordings only. Thermal imaging cameras are ideal for capturing such images even under very low light conditions.
Crowd Control
In big events like matches and concerts where a large footfall occurs, these cameras besides helping with security also help in managing and monitoring the crowd. They are used in high traffic areas like the entry and the exit points to ensure that a safe and smooth passage is maintained.
Marketing
In retail stores, it is used for a variety of purposes other than security. It helps in reviewing the shopping patterns, evaluating signage, to test the market merchandise in the key zones, compiling demographic data, and also determining the customer interaction with various elements of the retail store. The managers can actually see from the recordings if the customer gets proper responses for their queries, whether they were greeted and attended to properly or not etc. This helps in improving the customer’s experience and their confidence and trust in the brand.
Surveillance cameras have broken the traditional boundaries and found uses in varied sectors like research and development, sales and marketing, the entertainment industry, and traffic management to name a few.
