New technology often comes with new terminology hot on its heels. In a space with constant innovation, it can be difficult to distinguish between the buzzwords and industry jargon to find the solutions that have real merit. Indoor intelligence is one such field.
There are a lot of companies today that offer basic footfall counters and traffic monitoring solutions advertised as indoor intelligence. While those are valuable data points that contribute to indoor intelligence, true indoor intelligence goes far beyond basic data collection - it requires contextualization and analysis.
Indoor intelligence is created by leveraging algorithms and machine learning to convert raw data into actionable insights. It can be helpful to consider it as the convergence of several key elements.
Understanding the Pillars of Indoor Intelligence
Advanced Indoor Maps
Smart indoor solutions start with indoor intelligence - but what does that really mean? It is a singular truth to the Internet of Things (IoT) that no one technology will be able to address all of the use cases an organization is dealing with. When we consider the world of Big Data, the key concept is the collection of information from disparate sources through interoperable APIs. Similarly, interoperability is key to the cultivation of Indoor Intelligence.
The first piece of the puzzle is having location and situational awareness and that starts with maps. Indoor maps are a key foundational layer for any indoor IoT use case. Whether it’s asset tracking, providing wayfinding, or calculating population flow, none of these use cases can be implemented effectively without the context of location. Imagine a blue dot moving around on a blank screen - knowing a device’s position means very little without the context of a map.
As with most technologies, not all indoor maps are created equally. They need to be dynamic and layer-based to be able to integrate with current and future use cases and third-party providers. It’s also important that indoor maps be aligned to a real map of the world. Geospatial accuracy is necessary for your map to communicate with other systems.
Precise Indoor Positioning
Once you have location awareness, the next piece of the indoor intelligence puzzle is associated with collecting movement data using positioning technology. The ubiquity of personal and commercial devices in facilities has created a wealth of dynamic data points that are largely under-utilized without an indoor intelligence platform.
Using a variety of sensors and beacons, Indoor Positioning System (IPS) technology detects and tracks data about a device’s location or status. This can be accomplished using on-device positioning information or sensors that detect radio frequency (RF) transmissions including Wi-Fi, BLE, ultra-wideband and cellular.
This location data is ingested by the IPS, generating accurate coordinates that can then be displayed on an indoor map and fed into the advanced analytics engine. With a positioning system, organizations can implement location-based IoT solutions including blue dot wayfinding, real-time asset tracking, and population flow analysis.
Advanced Indoor Analytics
Using this input from on-device sensors, RF transmissions and guest interaction, an indoor intelligence platform organizes data using tokenization, AI, and algorithms in a data visualization engine, applying an organization’s unique business rules, using the output to drive advanced indoor IoT use cases.
Indoor analytics essentially transforms location data into valuable insights that help organizations understand how visitors interact with their indoor spaces. By capturing, interpreting, and visualizing data, indoor analytics provide key metrics and reports on visitor behavior and movement, including insights into footfall, dwell times, dendrograms and more.
With indoor analytics, organizations are empowered to make smarter, more informed decisions that produce extraordinary indoor experiences and drive results.
Indoor Security
Keeping your buildings secure is just as important as being able to access the data within them. In today’s landscape, it takes more than video surveillance to keep people and data safe. The concerns buildings face have changed drastically in recent years and so, too, have the tools that protect them. Precise indoor positioning and wide-spectrum RF detection come together to enable organizations to secure any site.
When indoor intelligence and indoor security converge, facilities and security teams are provided with visibility into their buildings and a robust wireless detection solution in a single, live security dashboard, so they can make key decisions around security, risk mitigation and public safety, at scale. From physical intrusion and property theft to data exfiltration and eavesdropping, it’s never been more important to bridge the gap between physical and digital security to keep buildings, and everything within them, safe.
Why is Indoor Intelligence Important?
Activating indoor intelligence is the key to transforming the ways in which we interact with our built environment. It reveals a world of possibilities, allowing us to make our world better by improving operations and building energy efficiencies while simultaneously creating hyper-contextual personalized experiences. Indoor intelligence supports the use cases that keep people safe and secure while smoothing some the greatest friction points of our daily lives.
At its core, indoor intelligence comes down to the elements of location data collection, contextualization, and analysis, made simple with the power of an AI-driven indoor intelligence platform. Contact our team of experts to access the power of your indoor data with Inpixon’s Indoor Intelligence™ platform.
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