University of Northwestern Ensures 24/7 Campus Safety Without Additional Headcount

Challenge:

• One patrol officer covering the entire campus, with 135 cameras that could record but not detect
• No way to log or respond to after-hours activity like propped doors, loitering, or restricted-area access
• Closing the gap through staffing alone would have required 3-4 additional officers at $60,000-$80,000 each

Solution:

• Ambient.ai deployed across the university's existing 135 Axis cameras with no hardware replacement
• Door Propped Open and Loitering detections turned routine, previously invisible activity into logged, actionable alerts
• Weapons detection proved itself within hours of going live, reframing how the team saw the entire system

A faith-based university with a real security obligation

The University of Northwestern, St. Paul is a private Christian university in the Twin Cities metro, serving approximately 3,500 enrolled students across two sites and 15 buildings. On any given day, around 1,300 students, faculty, and staff are on the grounds, alongside a year-round calendar of external events including a nationwide debate competition and international soccer delegations tied to the 2026 World Cup.

Bill Owen, Director of Public Safety, is the operator responsible for every security decision on the ground, and came to the role with nearly eight years of experience as a Minneapolis police officer. Dan Coughlin, Assistant Vice President of Facility Operations and Planning, controls the budget and sets the department's strategic direction, after 25 years as a city administrator overseeing police, fire, and emergency management. Together they brought a clear sense of what effective campus security should look like, and a sharp assessment of how far the institution was from that standard.

135 cameras with no intelligence

Before Ambient.ai, the university's physical security operation was fundamentally constrained by its tools. One patrol officer covered the entire campus on most shifts, and every time that officer responded to a call, the rest of campus went dark.

We had 135 cameras across the entire campus. They're what you would call static or fixed cameras. They could record, but they offered no intelligence whatsoever.
- Bill Owen, Director of Public Safety

Doors propped open, after-hours loitering, vehicles in restricted areas: none of it generated an alarm or appeared in any log. Closing that gap through staffing alone would have required three to four additional full-time officers every day, a cost Coughlin estimated at $60,000 to $80,000 per person in wages and benefits.

The largest breadth of detection

Owen's evaluation came down to a single standard: what can the system actually do when it's turned on, not what a vendor shows in a meeting. Competing solutions were constrained by processing built into the camera hardware itself, capping detection at two or three signatures per feed. Ambient.ai offered a library of over 150 threat signatures without replacing a single device. University of Northwestern has since deployed six to seven signatures per stream across its existing camera infrastructure.

Ambient.ai is a force multiplier. You take a small team, leverage the assets and infrastructure you already have, and you multiply your capability many times over.
- Dan Coughlin, AVP, Facility Operations & Planning

Proof on day one

For any school security leader, weapons detection sits at the top of the priority list. For Owen's team, the Person Brandishing Firearm signature was the capability the entire evaluation had been building toward. Within six to ten hours of going live, that signature triggered on an exterior camera stream. Owen's first assumption was that it had to be false: the university had no record of a weapon on campus in 20 years. It was real: local law enforcement was conducting a high-risk vehicle stop on the public street adjacent to campus, and officers had drawn their firearms. Ambient.ai detected it from across the road and notified Owen's team that same evening.

Within 6 to 10 hours of being deployed, the person brandishing firearm threat signature triggered. The capability we thought of as an insurance policy we'd never need? It activated on day one. That completely reframed how we thought about the Ambient system.
- Bill Owen, Director of Public Safety

What changed daily operations

The weapons detection story set the tone, but once the system was running, Ambient.ai surfaced how much had been happening on campus that the team never knew about. The detections that changed daily operations most were not the dramatic ones.

Here's what I didn't expect. I went in focused on the high-stakes threat signatures: person brandishing a firearm, aggressive behavior. Those are the dramatic ones. But the two that have transformed how we function every single day are the ones that sound the most routine: doors being propped open and loitering.
- Bill Owen, Director of Public Safety

• Over 100 incidents detected per week that were previously invisible
• Access control gaps closed in real time, with propped doors resolved within minutes of a mobile alert
• Investigations reduced from hours to minutes, including a borrowed-car timeline pulled in a single interaction
• Medical emergencies detected before anyone calls for help, via the Person Fallen Down signature
• Campus safety turned into a recruiting advantage, with the lobby's live Ambient.ai display becoming part of the tour

If it catches a spikeball dive, think about what happens if a student is alone at 2 in the morning and collapses from a cardiac event. The response time goes from minutes to immediate. That is what this means in practice.
- Bill Owen, Director of Public Safety

If you gave me a choice right now: Ambient.ai or five additional staff members. It is an easy, easy decision. We choose Ambient.
- Bill Owen, Director of Public Safety

What's next

University of Northwestern has identified additional locations across campus for expansion, and the internal case is already made. For Owen and Coughlin, the question is no longer whether Ambient.ai belongs at the center of how the campus protects its people, but how far they can take it.

Today, the people who control the budget and plan the future of this university are putting Ambient on the mountaintop. That shift happened because the product worked.
- Dan Coughlin, AVP, Facility Operations & Planning