Milestone VMS on Canyon School District Buses
Information Certainty: Speculative
Deployment Purpose: Access Control
| Summary |
|---|
| Canyons School District in Utah upgraded its buses with Milestone VMS solution, using Sintron Technologies' servers and Axis Communications' cameras. The solution, lauded by Security Solution Awards, offers redundant storage and remote access. Though not confirmed, facial recognition like SAFR could integrate, given Milestone's flexibility. With increasing security concerns, such additions may become prevalent, especially after incidents like school shootings. |
Products and Institutions:
Status and Events:
| Status | Ongoing |
|---|---|
| Events | Start (?, Documented, ?, No description) |
| Start Date | |
| End Date |
Users:
| Involved Entities | Stone Security |
|---|---|
| Managed by | Canyon School District |
| Used by | Canyon School District |
Location:
| City | Sandy City |
|---|---|
| Country ⠉ | USA |
Description[ ]
School buses in the district were upgraded to a Milestone VMS 'solution'. The mobile recording servers are from Sintron Technologies. The solution won an award for best solution from Security Solution Awards. Stone Security partners with Milestone when they deploy in Utah. It is unclear whether facial recognition is in use, cameras from Axis Communications are. As an example, these networked cameras are compatible with SAFR face recognition, which has reportedly been given to schools to trial on their already integrated camera systems. It is easy to add on facial recognition and other analytic capabilities to Milestone VMS, and it is suspected in this case that if it has already not been in use, it could be, especially as schools scale up their surveillance capabilities as a 'response' to school shootings.
The Canyons School District in Salt Lake County, Utah, serves about 33,900 students in 44 schools. Covering 192 square miles, Canyons relies on a well-coordinated bus system, transporting 15,000 students daily on bus routes covering almost 1.5 million miles a year. For the buses, a team specified a mobile video system built on the Milestone Systems open platform, video management software (VMS), integrated with multiple, on-board 360° cameras from Axis Communications and a mobile recording server 2
Schreyer explained that video is stored redundantly within the bus, both on the server as well as in the cameras. If there’s an accident that takes down the server, video from the cameras can still be retrieved. The bus servers store video for 30 days, and any time an equipped bus pulls into a district schoolyard, the server will connect back to the corporate Milestone server and offload the video for central archiving. The video is stored in the district’s data center for access on an authorized, as-needed basis. When an incident occurs, the Transportation Department can share recorded video with school administration or local authorities 1
Over the past two years, RealNetworks has developed a facial recognition tool that it hopes will help schools more accurately monitor who gets past their front doors. Today, the company launched a website where school administrators can download the tool, called SAFR, for free and integrate it with their own camera systems 3
References
- ^ x
- ^ "10 Field-Proven Brands Win SSI Security Solutions Awards at GSX". (2018) <https://www.securitysales.com/access/security-solutions-awards-gsx/> Accessed: 2022-06-12
- ^ "{Utah School District Equips Buses with Open Platform, Multi-Partner, Mobile Video System".
- ^ Lapowsky, Issie. Schools Can Now Get Facial Recognition Tech for Free. Should They?. , 2018.