Multimedia technology and applications in security

Security Systems deal with realtime or near realtime data to evaluate and prosecute crime. The data to date is predominantly text based interpretations of exception reports from an alarmed site. Where images or “video” is used the information is in the form of either “frozen frames” or a “video feed” often temporally unsynchronised with the event. Multimedia (MM) Presentation and Communications Technology are two distinctly different application streams of the very versatile Multimedia Technology that can be applied to security to satisfy most requirement via a common platform. The focus of this paper will be to present a view on why security technology must develop more interactivity and integration between technology groups used and then explore the relevant multimedia characteristics that could be used to make security systems more efficient. Examples of implementation show that this technology will develop to provide the security industry a very versatile platform to achieve highly efficient and information rich integration of functions