Press Backgrounder
Who is Scyron?
Scyron is a security and surveillance services company and the world leader in intelligent video surveillance and presentation of visual and audio evidence.
Scyron offers an innovative and complete solution from the capture, transmission, analysis and editing of visual and audio data, such as CCTV/ surveillance footage, through to its presentation as evidence in court.
Read a full biography of Chief Executive Officer, Mike Wilks
Read a full biography of Non Executive Director, Richard Mansfield
Some 48 police forces in the UK use Scyron technology as well as foreign police forces, private security firms and government agencies, including the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security.
Unique to Scyron is software that automates the capture and analysis of video footage by pin-pointing specific “incidents,” such as people coming and going from a drug dealer’s house or vandals scaling a perimeter fence. By highlighting only specific incidents, it eliminates the need and cost of analysing manually hours of video or CCTV/surveillance footage. In a major incident, the cost of manual analysis of video footage is often measured in hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Also, Scyron provides award winning technology to edit and present multimedia evidence in court – whether it is video, audio or stills, such as photography, documents and maps – enabling law enforcers to present themselves professionally and effectively and secure convictions.
Ownership
Established in 2002 and based in Birmingham, Scyron in the Greek language is synonymous with alarm.
Privately-owned, the company was funded with the aid of DTI grants and private venture capital funding. Private investors include the Mercia Fund, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and Datasat Communications Ltd.
An unusual birth
Scyron’s founder and chief technology officer is Richard Mansfield who began his career at the University of Birmingham’s Underwater Acoustics Department.
The company’s “incident-recognition” technology was conceived originally as a warning system to help save children should they fall into unattended swimming pools.
This ability to record or locate only specific incidents had immediate appeal to police forces which consume thousands of man-hours logging and analysing video content from surveillance operations. A typical metropolitan police force will have hundreds or thousands of individuals under 24-hour surveillance at any one time. Given that it takes 5-man days to analyse manually a single 24-hour CCTV tape, the ability to shrink this operation to several hours amounts to huge cost savings, enabling police forces to better deploy their scare resources and better utilise tax payers’ money.
A complete capability: from surveillance to presentation
At the core of Scyron’s software is a smart incident-recognition algorithm that logs specific events. The software can be programmed simply to search or capture certain incidents. A typical incident could be to film covertly people lingering suspiciously in a drug haunt while ignoring passers by, or filming people entering a stairwell but ignoring dogs and cats and anomalous lighting conditions which would trigger motion detector cameras.
Also, surveillance tape can be interrogated retrospectively. Several zones can be tagged and interrogated in one video scene. For example different search parameters may be ascribed to different zones, such as doorways, in a single video frame.
Detect and Deter – a total solution capability
Scyron offers a total solution capability from the initial capture of evidence to its presentation in a courtroom. This capability can be broken down to capture, transmission, analysis, edit and presentation.
1. Capture: Linked to a normal video camera, the Scyron system triggers the camera to record only prescribed incidents. Recordings can be tape or digital and stored on a hard-disk.
2. Transmission: Once information is captured, it can be retrieved either by collecting the tape or hard disk from the point of surveillance. However, this might not always be practical, particularly during covert operations. Scyron therefore makes it possible for its system to alert the authorities that an incident has been captured. The data may then be downloaded remotely using a secure, encrypted 3G mobile, wireless or satellite connection, leaving the surveillance site undisturbed.
3. Analysis: Video or audio information may be analysed and selected according to a variety of search criteria, saving days and weeks of valuable time.
4. Edit: Once evidence is identified, the data may be edited and enhanced in a number of ways using an easy-to-use software program that requires no special training and can run on a normal laptop. The software enables operators to mask or highlight objects, background or speech with ease, and even label and track people or objects of interest, such as tracking the movements of a shoplifter in a crowded store. Previously law enforcement agencies relied on complicated software packages designed for the TV broadcast industry, which required trained operators.
5. Presentation: Scyron’s court presentation software package provides police and prosecutors the ability to present video, stills, sound recordings and other multimedia in a consistent and highly professional manner via a laptop connected to high definition screens. It offers a simple interface to drag and drop files, edit them on the fly and present them in a dynamic fashion, with the flexibility to respond to the court’s needs – for example show clips out of sequence if so desired. The operator can even edit or retrieve a scene while displaying another scene to the court. The court only sees what the operator intends.
A Growth Market – Big Brother need not be watching you
Intelligent or targeted surveillance is a less intrusive means of surveillance and key to protecting civil liberties and privacy.
There are more than 25 million CCTV cameras in the world. In the UK there are 4.2 million CCTV cameras (about one for every 14 people) – more than any other country in Europe and twice as many as Germany, which is the second largest user with 1.6 million.
The advent of IP technologies is seeing rapid convergence in the CCTV/ surveillance markets with strong double digit growth globally forecast by analysts to the end of the decade. By 2010 the market for network cameras and IP video surveillance is estimated to reach $2.6 billion, of which approximately $480 million will be for software alone (IMS Research).
Frost & Sullivan stated that the European CCTV and video surveillance equipment markets earned revenues of $1.42 billion in 2005 and estimates this to reach $1.94 billion in 2012.
The UK CCTV market has grown 7% between 2002 and 2004, according to Market Business Development Ltd (MBD). MBD predicts a 2% growth in all areas of the UK’s CCTV market for the period 2007-2011. Areas expected to grow strongly are remote monitoring services, rapid deployment cameras and alarm activated systems.
Drivers for market growth continue to be factors such as terrorism, investments in infrastructure and the need to reduce operating expenses and better deploy resources through automation.
Scyron Customers include:
The West Midlands Police has used Scyron technology to take the drudgery out of analysing video footage taken on covert surveillance operations. In one instance, seven days worth of video was analysed in less that two hours.
The same police force secured 200 convictions for football hooliganism using Scyron to enhance and present the video evidence in court.
The London Underground is on of the UK’s largest users of CCTV cameras and uses Scyron technologies to present evidence and respond to requests under the Data Protection Act. The technology is used to enhance/highlight people in a scene and mask out others.
The London Borough of Fulham and Hammersmith has 14,000 properties valued at over 2.8 billion. It called in Scyron to help automate the analysis of CCTV footage to identify vandals damaging property.
Private sector growth. Scyron has a number of early private sector clients. These include private detective agencies and transport and utilities companies. For example, national and regional bus companies in London, Oxford and Nottingham use Scyron technology. Video footage of incidents on buses is shown to suspects with Scyron technology used mask the identities of other passengers.
In locations where communication links are non-existent, a utility company is protecting remote sub-stations using video and audio surveillance technology linked to a control centre over a satellite link.
While about 80% of Scyron’s sales are public sector, the company is targeting growth in commercial security, transport and energy sectors and foresees a more equitable split between public and private sectors sales. It is also exploring niche markets such as individuals or organisations that want to protect high value assets such as racehorses, tankers, yachts and high value warehouses.
Scyron is a member of Association of Police and Public Security Suppliers (APPSS).
Clear vision
Increasingly, Scyron is being asked to provide organisations with total solutions rather than discrete products. The company has won a number of high-profile contracts, and has been involved in providing analysis and presentation solutions to the Crown Prosecution Service in several high profile murder cases.
The company’s goal is to be known as the world leader in intelligent security and surveillance technology by 2010.
Underlining Scyron’s R&D philosophy is that its solutions are developed specifically in response to market and customer demands. Every product to- date has been developed in conjunction with end-users. Some 20 man years of R&D have gone into developing the current portfolio and the company’s patent has been registered worldwide.
In the future the Scyron foresees the growth of intelligent predictive evidence gathering and the control of cameras and audio surveillance remotely using secure satellite links. The company believes that targeted incident-based surveillance is crucial to protecting civil liberties and ensuring effective use of resources – Big Brother need not be watching you.
Awards
1) 2006 Technology Transfer Grant to analyse cell movement on microscope slides.
2) 2007 2nd Technology Transfer Grant to explore retrieval and storage of body worn video.
3) DTI R&D grant to look at automated event analysis of live CCTV video.
4) Joint winners for the West Midlands Connect Business Development Challenge, known as the £1m investment challenge.
5) 2008 Security Excellence Awards - Winner of IT Initiative of the Year award
