Nokia advances fight against COVID-19 with analytics-based thermal detection solution

• Provides organizations with an automated, simple and scalable approach to identify COVID-19 symptoms and monitor mask compliance for facilities with thousands of people
• Solution uniquely combines on-premises thermal cameras, centralized management, analytics, cloud and private wireless technologies for both wired and connectionless indoor and outdoor facilities
• Ensures supply chain resilience and business continuity by keeping people safe
• Nokia Chennai factory uses solution to reduce resources needed to monitor employee safety during the pandemic and demonstrates compliance to local regulations

Nokia today announced an automated, zero-touch elevated temperature detection solution designed to help spot potential COVID-19 infections in facilities with thousands of people. The Nokia Automated Analytics Solution for Access Control streamlines and fully automates the process of identifying people with elevated temperatures and confirms mask compliance, in large environments with multiple accesses.

Leveraging advanced analytics, a business rules engine, centralized management, machine learning and ubiquitous connectivity, the Nokia solution dramatically reduces the cost of detection and ensures business continuity and supply chain resilience during the pandemic. Organizations can also expand the solution to support other ongoing use cases to protect employees and building assets, including predictive surveillance, machine maintenance and security threats.

Amit Shah, head of Analytics and IoT for Nokia, said: “Whether in factories, ports, offices, airports, schools, or outdoor screening centers, mission-critical networks and digital automation solutions play a leading role in ensuring supply resilience, business continuity, and workers‘ safety in real-time. Our Nokia Automated Analytics Solution brings centralized data, analytics, and an automation management system, allowing large organizations to make intelligent decisions to protect their people and facilities during and in a post-pandemic world, while respecting individual privacy.”

The technology uses an open architecture and has a rich suite of analytics with a flexible set of automation workflows and rules to adapt the solution to each enterprise’s needs. The company has successfully deployed the solution at multiple locations, including its own Chennai factory to monitor employee safety and plans to deploy the solution for enterprise customers across multiple industry segments.

Sudarshan Pitty, Head of the Nokia Chennai Factory, said: “As the factory reopened to production and over 1,000 employees returned to work, we abided by local regulations for monitoring temperatures and mask usage for every single person entering and leaving the site. The Nokia Automated Analytics Solution has enabled us to ensure regulatory compliance in an automated way, round the clock with zero misses in real-time. This solution has enabled us to boost employee availability by reducing the waiting time in queues and removing the need to assign additional staff to carry out manual checks.”

The Nokia Automated Analytic Solution uses a thermal camera to capture video footage and takes individual temperature readings (accurate to +/- 0.3 degrees Celsius) for every person that enters the screening site. The analytics engine quickly processes the video clip to determine whether the individuals require additional screening, or are not complying with mask-wearing rules. Through its centralized management approach the solution triggers an institution’s chosen operational workflow. If an irregularity is detected, a centralized, enterprise-wide view is presented and a real-time SMS or email alert is automatically sent to personnel in the field to initiate track-and-trace or post-detection actions. The entire process takes place in near-real time and the human-less operation enables scaling to very large environments with thousands of people and multiple access points.

Leo Gergs, ABI Research, Research Analyst, said: “The Nokia Automated Analytics Solution for Access Control is a great example of the important role that network infrastructure vendors can play in fighting the spread of a global pandemic, such as Covid-19. Furthermore, the modular architecture allows easy repurposing of the solution to use cases such as port or smart city traffic monitoring and therefore to address the ever-increasing demand for automated data analytics capabilities, which will continue to rise in line with further enterprise digitalization.”

Pop-up connectionless outdoor test centers have been a common way to complete COVID-19 testing. Nokia can leverage its Nokia Digital Automation Cloud private wireless network solution to provide seamless outdoor connectivity for these operations.

Once concerns about COVID-19 subside, organizations can repurpose the solution to support other use cases to protect employees, site visitors and facilities, including predictive surveillance and machine maintenance, security threats and anomaly detection, and customized industry-specific analytics.

Additional resources

• Nokia Automated Analytics Solution Web page

About Nokia for Industries

Nokia has deployed mission-critical networks to over 1,300 leading customers in the transport, energy, large enterprise, manufacturing, webscale, and public sector segments around the globe. Leading enterprises across industries are leveraging our decades of experience building some of the biggest and most advanced IP, optical, and wireless networks on the planet. The Nokia Bell Labs Future X for industries architecture provides a framework for enterprises to accelerate their digitalization and automation journey to Industry 4.0. Nokia has also pioneered the private wireless space with many verticals, and now has over 180 large enterprise customers deploying it around the world.

About Nokia
We create the technology to connect the world. Only Nokia offers a comprehensive portfolio of network equipment, software, services and licensing opportunities across the globe. With our commitment to innovation, driven by the award-winning Nokia Bell Labs, we are a leader in the development and deployment of 5G networks.  

Our communications service provider customers support more than 6.4 billion subscriptions with our radio networks, and our enterprise customers have deployed over 1,300 industrial networks worldwide. Adhering to the highest ethical standards, we transform how people live, work and communicate. For our latest updates, please visit us online www.nokia.com  and follow us on Twitter @nokia.