The summer of 2012 has seen an increase in the number of fires in schools in Sweden, but at the same time, in many cases, the damage has been limited due to soft surveillance. According to Mindmancer, the key to limiting the damage is to have a dialog with the groups of youths that gather around the school yards, and in addition, if a fire is set then early detection is essential as every second is valuable.

"We have seen a high level of activity in and around schools throughout June and July with over 100,000 detections of human activity when the alarm is active", says Johnny Berlic, CEO of Mindmancer.

"There has been a sharp increase in the number of detected arson attempts and a lot of activity with youths running around on the school roofs. This activity is particularly dangerous, partly because the youths could fall and injure themselves but also because fires that are started within the ventilation systems can easily spread and result grave consequences."

"We can see that the schools that are using soft surveillance methods are those that are coping the best. Soft surveillance aims to discover the activity pattern of the youths, for example what time they meet and how many of them hang around the school, and then an adult can be sent in to begin a dialog with them. The adult could be a field assistant or a specially trained guard, who will then build a relation with the youths", says Johnny Berlic

"As a result, in general manpower costs do not increase on average per annum, but at the same time more concentrated manpower may be required at certain points of the year. The solution is about having the right resources in the right place, at the right time. It pays in both the short and long term. In most instances the municipalities already have employed guarding services in place that go to check specific places at specific times. We simply make them go where and when they are needed."

"When we first introduced the school guard and soft surveillance solution, fires in schools were costing over a billion Swedish crowns each year nationwide. This has now substantially decreased. Over the last few years we have grown quickly to become the leading supplier of soft surveillance to schools in Sweden and we have thousands of examples of how intelligent camera surveillance has deterred vandalism and arson attempts. With over a hundred schools we can clearly see the positive effect of having a dialog with the youths", concludes Johnny Berlic.

Both the municipalities of Stockholm and Gothenburg have deployed these services for many years now and the philosophy behind their actions is simple – this solution decreases and prevents vandalism and saves money for the municipality. As a result, vandalism and insurance costs are reduced and the police no longer have to chase down youths after a prank has gone wrong and a school has burnt down.