Improve Collaboration and Intelligence With Smart Spaces

Updates to Lumada Video Insights Support More Data-Driven Approaches to Incident Response and Operations

It’s no secret that data is everywhere. And because of customer needs and activities, the amount of data to be analyzed and managed properly only continues to increase, as it comes from more spaces than ever before. The growth of technologies such as internet of things (IoT), video analytics and  3D lidar has created an opportunity for enterprises to implement smart spaces that provide better safety, improved operations and greater customer experience.

Along with this attention to smart spaces and the technologies that make such locations possible, there is a growing emphasis on operations that are both decentralized and distributed. This trend allows for individual nodes or individuals to have more insights and make more intelligent decisions, and for groups to self-manage their operations and responses to incidents.

By launching a slate of updates to Hitachi’s Lumada Video Insights portfolio, Hitachi Vantara empowers these teams, and better meets the demands of its customers. These new portfolio software and services offerings make it easier for enterprises to incorporate and combine new sources of data and better analyze it. They will be able to deliver the applications and insights that help create smart spaces via distributed intelligence and teams collaborating through technology.

These updates include:

• Sensor fusion, which allows manufacturers, transportation, commercial and industrial organizations to combine and co-analyze different types of data, to improve operational accuracy and enable new use cases. Data types include video, 3D lidar and audio, which can come from new sensors, existing security camera systems or other IoT sensors, to transform that data into insights through computer vision and machine learning.
• Hitachi Visualization Suite (HVS) has been updated with a workflow engine and mobile app for incident response and collaboration. This will dramatically improve how team members can respond to specific incidents and associated tasks, to ensure that resources are allocated in the most efficient manner possible.

For example, a regional transit system gets a report that a person has fallen on the tracks at a particular train station. Video or lidar sensors can automatically create an incident alert that is sent to members of different teams and show the tasks that need to be handled and responded to for the particular incident. This could include the train conductor, to provide plenty of time to slow down or stop; paramedics, for medical support; police, for security; and maintenance teams, to ensure operations can resume in a safe and timely manner. All of these responders can assign themselves the right tasks, mark them as closed, and include images, documents or comments about the task that could be relevant further down the line.

People need the right information at the right time, whether they’re at a desk or in the field. The new HVS mobile app provides an extension of the traditional HVS offering: It provides easy onboarding and training, map-view-level interaction, and incident and event handling, all in the palm of app users’ hands. With this update, a user, whether part of a cleaning crew at a train terminal, or a police officer or firefighter responding to an accident, will have the tools to receive, respond to and provide information that is based on their specific role.

HVS provides this via a single pane of glass that gives organizations greater control of the chaos that may be going on around them. A variety of sensors and systems can detect events as they are happening and HVS distributes the intelligence to the right users so that the organization can react with greater speed and efficiency.

HVS is an essential part of the Hitachi Smart Spaces solution, and is listed in Microsoft’s Azure Marketplace. With the refreshed features listed above, the solution provides deeper customer value and tools that help enhance safety, operations, and experience in many of our public spaces.

Jake Zborowski, General Manager, Microsoft Azure Platform at Microsoft Corp. said, “We’re pleased to welcome Hitachi Visualization Suite, part of Hitachi Smart Spaces and Video Intelligence to the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, which gives our partners great exposure to cloud customers around the globe. Azure Marketplace offers world-class quality experiences from global trusted partners with solutions tested to work seamlessly with Azure.”

The solution is flexible, able to meet the needs of a variety of situations through a distributed and decentralized analytics and incident management system. From smart cameras, 3D lidar and other sensors, to software and applications to professional services and consulting, Hitachi Smart Spaces provides solutions for industries, such as transportation, retail and manufacturing, to make their spaces smarter and empower their people to make smarter decisions.

The benefits of these advancements bear repeating. With the updated offerings, customers will have:

• More insights about the world from more types of data, enabling new data-driven use cases, in addition to the real-time and historical analytics they expect from HVS.
• Tools for distributed collaboration that allow for faster and more effective response to incidents.
• More resilient systems. This last year has taught us that resiliency is incredibly important. By avoiding a single-point-of-failure risk that comes with centralized management, organizations can operate and coordinate even during disruptions.

As we have experienced disruptions in business and life over the last year, the need to become more resilient through new technologies and tools that improve collaboration has become clearer than ever. Doing so will help society and the systems that support it to become more capable of dealing with whatever the next unexpected change or disruption may be. With its new updates, Hitachi Smart Spaces provides organizations with a comprehensive set of data-driven tools and services to improve our world. Opportunities to advance are plentiful, whether by making people safer, driving sustainability and efficiency, or enhancing our experiences in the smart spaces we interact with as we go about our daily lives.

Get a front-row seat to the future of Social Innovation. Join us at the virtual Hitachi Social Innovation Forum on May 25-27. Register here.

Michael Donahue is Director of Products and Technology Partners, Smart Spaces & Lumada Video Insights at Hitachi Vantara.