science

Hikvision

Hikvision is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hikvision rather than just read about it. In short: Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd., often shortened to Hikvision, is a Chinese partly state-owned manufacturer and supplier of video surveillance equipment for civilian and military purposes, headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Due to its alleged involvement in mass surveillance of Uyghurs and the Xinjiang internment camps and national security concerns, the company has been placed under sanctions from…

Key takeaways

Hikvision belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hikvision to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hikvision from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd., often shortened to Hikvision, is a Chinese partly state-owned manufacturer and supplier of video surveillance equipment for civilian and military purposes, headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Due to its alleged involvement in mass surveillance of Uyghurs and the Xinjiang internment camps and national security concerns, the company has been placed under sanctions from the U.S. and European governments.

History Hikvision was founded in 2001 by Zhejiang HIK Information Technology Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 浙江海康信息技术股份有限公司) with the company having a 51% stake and Gong Hongjia (龚虹嘉) a 49% stake at that time. Hikvision has been listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange since 2010. In October 2016, the company concluded a deal to use Movidius' computer vision technology. In May 2017, Hikvision established Hikstorage, a subsidiary focused on the production of storage devices. In January 2021, the company won a US$33 million, 1,900-camera smart city project in Shanghe County, Shandong that includes cameras with facial recognition and license plate recognition technologies. In 2021, Best Buy, Home Depot, and Lowe's stopped selling cameras from Hikvision brand Ezviz due to concerns about Hikvision's complicity in surveillance and human rights violations in Xinjiang. In 2022, Hikvision was awarded a Chinese government contract to develop software to track "key people" in order to prevent them from entering Beijing. The same year, IPVM also reported that Hikvision has specific alarms in its software to alert Chinese police to "religion, Falun Gong, and various protest activities. In 2022, Hikvision won a "smart campus" contract with the Chinese government to alert university administrators of students fasting during Ramadan. Amazon Web Services provides cloud services to Hikvision. In 2023, Hikvision released software that includes ethnic minority detection. In January 2024, Hikvision joined the United Nations Global Compact. In the 2020s, HikVision started developing surveillance products that integrate large language models (LLMs) which enable operators to search footage using text prompts to retrieve the relevant video. After HikVision started offering such systems, local governments across China started integrating the products to their existing surveillance system.

Sanctions and bans

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hikvision

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hikvision claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hikvision before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hikvision ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hikvision

In research: Hikvision appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hikvision in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hikvision is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Action cameras, Artificial intelligence industry in China, Camcorders, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hikvision outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Hikvision in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hikvision means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hikvision out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hikvision in simple terms?

Why does Hikvision matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hikvision?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hikvision.