By: Reijendam, W. van, 13th of May, 2008

The company Sound Intelligence based in the city of Groningen which developed security cameras that are able to react upon aggressive sounds, managed to place its product in the United Kingdom. The listening cameras from Sound Intelligence are placed in four English cities; London, Glasgow, Manchester and Coventry. Up to now, there only are tens of cameras placed, which sum to revenues of ‘a few 100.000s’, according to CEO Derek van der Vorst. But the UK, with about six million security-cameras placed, one-tenth of the world total quantity, guarantees a huge market. Because of the export-possibilities the revenues of Sound Intelligence doubled.

The company started in 2005 with an experiment in the city of Groningen, wherein microphones on cameras in the center of the city detect the aggressive sound in voices and inform the security-center about the potential problem areas. This saves valuable time of police officers who are able to guard the public safety elsewhere. The idea of the aggression detection is based on the idea that an angry person starts to use his voice differently. That person becomes a means of intimidation. The tone of his voice will be influenced by the high pressure of his breath, because of the upsetting situation. The difference in tone is recognized by the intelligent cameras from Sound Intelligence.

The expirement turned out to be successful and since then the company is called from all parts of the world. The city council of London also tested the system, and came to the same satisfying conclusion, according to Van der Vorst. ‘The reactions were very positive. Often people get thrilled by the idea of violation of the privacy of citizens, because it regarderd as a system listening to conversations of people, but it doesn’t record any audio at all, it just informs the security center.’ The law in the UK is similar to the Dutch, so to place the microphones there will be no extra adaptions necessary. For the time being Sound Intelligence focuses only on the United Kingdom, although Germany in the mean time also turned out to be interested "Not only the export-possibility is causing the exponential growth in revenues", Van der Vorst says: ‘Prisons are also interested.

We just placed our cameras in the prison of Zoetermeer, only the real tough guys are placed there. The city of Lelystad performed a similar experiment, and we hope the other 65 prisons will follow their lead. ‘Another important application is the protection of threathened civil service employees. Research states that 60% of the staff at desks has experiences with aggressive customers. A quarter of the desk-employees has to deal with physical violence.Sound Intelligence’s CEO Van der Vorst gets a lot of questions from that sector: ‘Especially bigger housing-corporations and first-aid places are real hotspots. Social services are less interested, because guards are placed there already. Those guards are deciding upon the placement of our system as well. When a aggression detector is placed, they’re not needed anymore, so they will not support it.’ Public Transport discovered the aggression detection as well. The council of the city of Amsterdam is placing the cameras to protect the bus-drivers in de ‘North’ district. The Dutch railway company is also planning to equip its trains with the detector. Because of the huge demand for the system, Van der Vorst expects the company to grow from fifteen to twenty employees in the coming year The city of Amsterdam gave Sound Intelligence permission to place the system with the aggression detector at the ‘Buikslotermeerplein’.

Bron: Financieel Dagblad, 13 mei 2008