Alarm.com announced new solutions that will enable monitoring station operators to make more informed decisions and expedite emergency response. Over the past year, Alarm.com has built a portfolio of visual verification features that allow central station operators to more rapidly and thoroughly assess the emergency situation and expedite the appropriate response.

“Alarm.com has an extensive data set coming from the system, service provider and monitoring station, and we are always looking for ways to bring these together to enhance the experience for all involved,” said Adam Brandfass, director of product management, partner tools and operations at Alarm.com. “As with all our solutions, we work closely with our service providers and monitoring stations to understand their operations, problems, preferred interactions and downstream effects. Through these interactions, we saw the opportunity to help the monitoring station operators make more informed decisions and support service providers with industry-leading solutions.”

Brandfass continued, “In recent years, the proliferation of video cameras and initiatives like The Monitoring Association’s Alarm Validation Standard (AVS-01) have resulted in concerted efforts across the industry to increase how visual verification and contextual information can be used to reduce false alarms and expedite real alarms. Alarm.com is in a good position to help all involved and is excited to create more situations where the customer has a valuable, secure and enjoyable experience while receiving the response they need.”

With the evolution of Alarm.com’s Visual Verification interface, operators will now have contextual indicators, live video feeds and video analytics tools to help identify if there is a person or a perceived threat at a given location. By leveraging multiple data sources to understand the activity surrounding an alarm event, Alarm.com distills the information for the operator in the form of a person on-site likelihood indicator so that the operator may relay this critical information to first responders dispatched to the location.

By combining video analytics (identifying key video events where a person is present) and ambient insights for alarm response (recognizing activity around a property and delivering contextual information), operators are outfitted with a holistic perspective of the situation. Operators can efficiently assess alarm levels and relay crucial information to first responders, enabling the responding agencies to optimally allocate resources and execute their response. This can be done even in situations where camera coverage may be limited, as operators can still effectively monitor and evaluate risks for a particular site.

“Operators also see advantages when establishing communication with a customer,” Brandfass said. “The contextual information can be conveyed to describe the situation and inform the customer during these stressful situations. Better information leads to better decisions, the avoidance of false dispatches and, in true emergency situations, expedited response. For the usage of this information to be effective, condensing the numerous data points down to useful information is critical. Providing indicators such as person on-site likelihood and highlighting essential video clips with person-detected analytics help create scenarios where operators can effectively utilize this information to its fullest potential.”

Alarm.com will continue to build on its visual verification interface with new indicators and proactive response options coming later this year. One of the enhancements, unexpected event indicators, uses system data in and around the property to flag if events occurring during the alarm match normal behavior.

“Being able to distill a significant amount of information during stressful situations into a digestible format is exciting and powerful,” Brandfass said. “We’re already hearing from monitoring station operators that this helps them clearly understand the conditions of an alarm event. Receiving positive feedback and learning that our efforts genuinely assist people in performing their crucial tasks is deeply gratifying.

Brandfass continued, “Operators are looking out for the customer and the people and places that matter to them. As we further develop our visual verification solution, we can empower operators to optimize the impact they have on the customer and their security. Within the industry, we understand that the true value of a security system lies not in individual components but in the collaboration of all elements and people involved. Alarm.com’s motivation is to enhance each of the components, strengthen the connections between all parties involved and make an impact in solving real-world problems.”