Every day my inbox is filled with offers to learn about AI and IA and all the newest technologies emerging in the security industry. According to the emails, technology will save us and keep us safe. It’s the premise that CCTV cameras, biometrics, AI assisted screening devices, app based wearable accessories, are not just ideological notions but real tools that will enhance security measures and will mitigate risks.
AI driven applications can detect crowds forming, alert venues of impending demonstrations, it can analyze groups of people and scan for potential threats of weaponry and violence. It can determine if your software is being hacked, it can signal changes or hacks in your systems, and in some cases, it can stop movement, lock people out, and deactivate electronic signals.
There is a new age question – should AI replace physical security guards? As someone in the security industry my answer is a resounding no. Should or will it change the landscape of the industry? ABSOLUTELY!
How do you determine if you need to add technology to the event you are planning?
Risk Assessment.
Where, when and what are your vulnerabilities?
Is there a direct concern for the safety of your attendees, your speakers or moderators? Are the topics presented posing threats? What is the political climate of your corporate sponsors? Have they been targeted in the past? Is there a cyber risk with your registration company, is your data at risk of being stolen?
Determine and Recognize the Risk
Decide on each risk’s validity: Is it likely or unlikely to happen. Are there persons, places and things that can be changed to reduce the risks?
Create an Operational Plan
Come up with feasible operating plan that help offset and mitigate these concerns. Effective risk management considers the risk, the response to the risk and the support needed to mitigate or change the outcome.
If you don’t know how to perform a risk assessment, find a partner to do it for you. Recognition is the first and crucial step in figuring out what you need to do to prepare for many eventualities.
As an event planner, you have an obligation to your staff, your exhibitors and your attendees to keep them as safe as possible while they are attending your event. The procedures that you put in place to keep them protected should not be barriers to your guests but instead pillars of merit showcasing that it’s not just the content of the product you are producing that matters but also their safety and security.
Prevention and Action Planning
What actions, tools and plans can you utilize to prevent and enact if an incident occurs? Does your event warrant the use of technology to assist in these plans?
Low tech items such as bollards, bike fencing, handheld metal detectors are easily available and relatively budget-friendly options. Does adding in AI and IA driven applications with biometric scans, meta data collections and social media/dark web intel help?
Consider the destruction that was caused in Vancouver this past year when someone purposely careened their vehicle into a crowd of people attending a neighborhood culture event. Festivals and events associations along with municipalities have long encouraged event planners to conduct risk assessments on each event to determine the ‘what if situations’ and to utilize all available technologies and equipment to prevent such risks. Could the use of technology have prevented this horrific event? The answer is two-fold. Large impenetrable low-tech barricades at the entrance of the street party could have stopped the vehicle from entering the area but would it have stopped the assailant from causing harm a different way? He was determined to hurt people. In an open-air event with multiple entry points it would have been virtually impossible, improbable and impractical, to scan and restrict access.
Determine if Technology Will Reduce Risk
IA and AI can be useful tools in detection, prevention and in some cases reacting to a situation quicker than a human. AI can monitor hundreds of cameras all at once. The average security guard can monitor 16 cameras at one time (and that number is skewed as close, detailed monitoring has been shown to be as low as 4 cameras at once). AI and IA would significantly assist in this type of setting.
Technology is a great tool and enhancement of physical security, but it can’t replace the need for a real-life person. A person that can adapt and move within the environment. They can alter their course to react to a situation. You can teach a bot to incapacitate someone that is running up onto a stage, but the bot can’t determine that the person running up on stage is a medic trying to save the life of a presenter that just collapsed.
Does technology have a place in your event? It should be a consideration – a tool – but it doesn’t negate the human aspect. At least not yet.
Treena Didine is the operations manager for Tone-Gar Group of Companies as well as the security manager for The International Centre in Mississauga, Ontario. She has been in the event industry for more than 28 years. She currently sits on the Emergency Planning Committee for Emergency Response at The International Centre and is active in health and safety training including active shooter, emergency risk assessments and response training for consumer and trader shows.
