IVA Pro Buildings: How Its Intelligent Video Analytics Works

IVA Pro Buildings is Bosch’s deep-learning-based and object-based video analytics technology developed for detecting and tracking subjects.

It is one of the features that gives their security cameras an extra layer of intelligence.

 

Moving Beyond Conventional Motion Detection

While the conventional motion detector only detects changes in images, the IVA Pro Buildings does more, finding what also causes the changes.

It identifies supported objects and uses their location, movement, direction, and behaviour to determine whether an event is worth reporting.

This is a better fit in real-world environments, where not all objects and movement pose security threats.

For example, a person who’s just walking across a parking lot, shadows, rain, car headlights or other events can trigger alerts in motion detection.

These irrelevant alerts, when there are many can eventually make you or the security unit not take notice of the important ones.

IVA Pro Buildings was designed to solve this problem by making it more selective. It recognises people and vehicles and distinguishes them from many common environmental disturbances.

 

Turning Detected Objects Into Security Events

There are rules that can be set which the system follows to capture and report real security threats while tracking people and vehicles.

For example, if you have a restricted area in your building, you can configure it to report when a person enters the area rather than when something (Inanimate or animate) moves into the section.

It supports functions such as line-crossing detection, entering or leaving defined areas, route detection, loitering, detecting objects that start or stop moving, and counting people or vehicles.

It can also monitor occupancy within defined areas and generate events when configured thresholds are reached.

Loitering and Occupancy Add Another Layer of Intelligence

IVA Pro Buildings can understand objects’ behaviours. It is more than tracking humans.

It can monitor loitering and occupancy, and detect when there’s a threat.

Let’s take loitering as an example. It can be normal for a person to just pass through an area, but when he’s staying in a restricted area for an unusually long period, the system triggers an alert.

Thanks to the time-based rules which can be configured to identify and interpret this type of behaviour.

This object-tracking capability also works for occupancy and counting.

Another good example is setting a threshold for the number of people or vehicles that can move into a defined zone.

The camera can provide information about how a space is being used, not just whether something moved inside it.

 

Is False Alarm Impossible with IVA Pro Buildings?

While this tech can differentiate between objects’ movement and environmental movement, reducing irrelevant detections, it can still trigger false alarms.

There are challenging conditions, such as when an object is too small, obscured, or hidden, which can make it difficult to distinguish it from its surroundings.

For example, in a crowded scene, reliable detection of an object can become difficult.

This is where camera positioning is essential. If it’s well-positioned with a clear view of the area, it would give better analytics than when it’s poorly mounted.

 

Calibration vs Configuration

IVA Pro Buildings advanced the traditional calibration of security cameras. It allows cameras to perform their basic detection and tracking without on-site calibration, as is known with most video analytics systems.

This makes deployment easier, and more efficient, reducing the time required to get the camera’s analytics working.

While an installer does not need to perform traditional geometric calibration, he still has to configure the camera properly to work efficiently.

He has to configure rules such as detection zones, lines, directions, time conditions, object types, occupancy thresholds, and others according to the security requirements of the site.

Take it like this, the camera can recognise an object, but cannot decide whether the object poses security concerns or not if the rules are not configured.

 

It creates useful Metadata

Another feature of this system is the generation of metadata that describes the scene that’s being detected and tracked.

It can generate metadata about classification, position, trajectory, size, speed, orientation, object ID, and associated alarm or counting information.

This can be used when investigating recorded footage.

You don’t have to spend hours checking a video to get your facts, you can narrow your search to relevant information about objects and events with the available analytics data.

You can also integrate the analytics with video management platforms to become part of a larger security system rather than as an isolated security system.

This is what we call intelligent analytics in security operations.

 

Its Edge-Based Design Keeps the Analytics Close to the Camera

IVA Pro Buildings also fits into Bosch’s broader use of edge-based artificial intelligence.

It does not depend entirely on a remote cloud service to analyse every frame, the camera can perform its video analytics at the edge.

You don’t depend on a constant cloud connection, and you also don’t need to send all camera footage to an external processing service.

This reduces the amount of sensitive video leaving the security unit, improving the entire surveillance system.

 

Knowing Where IVA Pro Buildings Fits

Despite its capabilities, IVA Pro Buildings is not Bosch’s answer to every video analytics requirement.

Its primary focus is detecting and tracking people and vehicles in building-related environments.

Bosch offers other analytics packages for more specialised requirements.

IVA Pro Traffic, for example, is designed for more detailed traffic-related applications and vehicle classification.

IVA Pro Perimeter addresses a different problem, including longer-range perimeter protection and situations involving deliberate intrusion techniques such as crawling or rolling.

You need to understand these features, and your needs when evaluating a security camera to deploy.

Someone looking to protect an office entrance, commercial building, warehouse, or parking area may find IVA Pro Buildings highly relevant while another securing a large open perimeter may need a different analytics package designed specifically for that environment.