What are High Volume Events?
A high volume event is a verification event that raises an alarm regardless of the content of the provided video because there are more than 15 verifications triggered within an hour.
On the 16th verification sent to our monitoring agents for review within the hour, the agent will follow normal alarm procedure irrespective of:
Security prompt selected by the customer
Content of the provided video
Whether test mode is enabled or not
If there are contacts in the contact list, the agent will attempt to reach the contacts through a courtesy call. As part of the courtesy call initiated due to a high volume event, the agent will include the context that this is only a courtesy call due to a high volume event.
At that moment, the person on the phone may choose to resolve the alarm or dispatch emergency services if necessary. You may also ask the agent to disarm the site for up to 12 hours.
If the agent cannot reach any listed contacts or if there are no contacts listed, the agent will dispatch emergency services to the address of the site (provided test mode is disabled).
What are some situations when a high volume event is initiated?
Situation #1
Suppose your business has a cleaning crew that forgets to disarm the alarm system (which is set to "Normal" security and test mode disabled) while entering the building. They proceed to clean the premises, which triggers motion detected events through our motion sensors. The context cameras set up for these motion sensors provide video for the agent to review.
In this case, the first 15 verification events will be deemed as not a threat to person or property and no alarm will be raised. If/when there is a 16th verification event within an hour, agents will raise an alarm regardless of whether there is threat to person or property. A courtesy call will be initiated to the contacts listed on the contact list and if the agent is unable to reach anyone listed, emergency services will be dispatched to the location of the site.
Situation #2
Suppose your site has a camera that points to an area where there can be heavy foot traffic (such as a sidewalk or a busy intersection). If you arm your site during a busy period of time, this can lead to multiple verification events triggered within an hour. The 16th verification event in this case will raise an alarm and the agent will follow normal alarm procedure (courtesy call and dispatch emergency services if deemed necessary).
How can a high volume event be avoided?
Such events can be annoying for both you and your business and may lead to false alarms. There are various ways you can avoid this situation:
Check your camera configuration, in particular:
Make sure the camera is not pointing to an area where there can be heavy foot traffic while your site is armed.
Make sure to set up regions of interest on your camera that you'd like to use as an alarm trigger to specify parts of the video on which it should detect movement/people.
Make sure that you are deliberate about selecting which cameras to set up as alarm triggers.
Note: You can check the number of video verification's through the "Agent Reviewed" section in the activity page of the alarms site.
Check your site configuration, in particular:
Ensure that your arming schedule is appropriate for your business so that the system only arms when necessary.
You can use the mobile app, console keypad, and door arm/disarm to manually arm/disarm your site.
We also recommend using the arming schedule feature to arm/disarm if helpful.
Remove cameras that may be sending redundant or unhelpful video verification events.
Consider breaking up your site into multiple sites if the cameras need to follow a different arming schedule to minimize unnecessary verification events that may be triggered.