Real-Time Security Centers Keep a Watchful Eye on Campus Activity

RTAC Manager and Intelligence Analyst Chris Hopkins says these monitoring capabilities have made a big difference in the support the department is able to provide to the ASU community. Property crimes, including bicycle thefts, have decreased significantly since the center was opened, and patrol officers report that their jobs are easier with real-time information at the ready.

“It gives them leverage when they’re investigating that they didn’t used to have,” Hopkins says, noting that his team is like an additional “virtual officer” with a birds-eye view of what’s happening on the ground. Today, when a 911 call comes in, RTAC analysts receive a live transcription, allowing them to immediately zero in on any cameras that could provide critical information to responding officers. And now, when officers apprehend a potential suspect, they can ask the analysts to confirm they have the right person based on their video observations.

 “I hate to use the phrase ‘game changer,’ but that’s very much what this is,” Hopkins says. “Everything changes as far as what you can do when you’re operating in a real-time environment.”

AI and Data Analytics: Modern Tools for Monitoring and Surveillance

Higher ed institutions can be like small cities when it comes to their physical safety and security requirements, and that’s doubly true for the many schools that operate within bustling urban environments. With this the case, a growing number of colleges and universities are taking a page out of the modern municipality playbook: They’re opening real-time security centers to provide 24/7 monitoring and surveillance.

DISCOVER: Bowie State University modernized its physical security infrastructure.

At Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich., the MSU Security Operations Center has been “an unbelievable force multiplier” for his team, says Mike Yankowski, chief of police and executive director of public safety. Like ASU, MSU leverages a Genetec system that combines video management from close to 3,000 cameras with access control and intrusion monitoring technologies. The facility runs around the clock, with 12 employees working in shifts.

“Say we get a call for a theft in progress: Someone stole a backpack in a resident dorm. They’re able to quickly pull up the relevant cameras as officers are en route,” Yankowski explains. Those live images can be used to guide responders if the suspect is on the move and verify whether the individual might be carrying a weapon, for example. With their access control capabilities, team members can monitor for security breaches, and with data analytics tools, they can search video for details, such as the suspect’s shirt color or their getaway vehicle’s direction of travel.

Many of the same technologies are in use across the six campuses of Georgia State University in Atlanta, Ga. L. Jared Abramson, executive vice president and COO, notes that the real-time security strategy came together relatively recently as part of a universitywide safety improvement plan. The university upgraded lights with brighter LEDs, added more lighting in places with poor visibility and installed emergency call boxes in strategic locations across their properties. For access control, it leveraged new software to enable mobile credentialing, and for video monitoring, it upgraded all campus cameras and improved their drone surveillance capabilities.

Staff monitoring Arizona State University’s Real Time Analysis Center have access to live video feeds from more than 3,000 cameras installed around the university’s four campuses.

The cameras deploy artificial intelligence (AI) technology for license plate recognition, motion detection, people-counting and similar capabilities, and they connect with the university’s other security feeds at the GSU emergency operations center. “Our philosophy as a university is to be extremely data-driven in terms of how we deploy our student-success interventions,” Abramson explains, “and we decided to take that same approach here with campus security.” Staff in the center turn to real-time dashboards to analyze the data coming in, “and they use that information to bring the right interventions to bear at the right time, in the right place,” he says.

Real-Time Operations at Grand Canyon University

A quick drone flight away from Arizona State’s RTAC in Phoenix, a new security center at Grand Canyon University has significantly bolstered safety for its campus community. The university, which has a fenced perimeter, features 125 buildings on 300 acres and has a daily population of about 35,000 students, staff and visitors.

Born out of a need for better operational efficiency, the GCU Public Safety Dispatch and Real-Time Operations Center opened in February 2025.

“We had all of these high-tech cameras on campus, but nobody was monitoring them in one place,” explains GCU Public Safety Director Robert Handy. 

Tasked with preventing crime from the surrounding area from seeping through the university’s gates, his team also had to deal with internal mischief, including frequent scooter thefts. “The idea was to automate wherever possible to improve what we could do with the resources we had,” he says.

Today, more than 500 AI-enabled cameras from Verkada stream live video footage from their strategic vantage points to a small team of analysts in the operations center. Drone images and body camera footage from security patrols are also digested by the team’s software, which integrates with GCU’s computer-aided dispatch system. “If we assign a call to a guard or officer, with a click of a button we can pull up the five cameras closest to the scene,” Handy explains.

He adds that security at GCU, as at any university, is a work in progress. 

“More cameras, new technologies and integrations, collaboration with Phoenix police — we’re always growing and finding ways to improve,” he says.