Smart cities might still take some time to come up in India, however the existing cities are deploying advanced video surveillance systems help catch, deter criminals. Cities are rapidly embracing the concept of Safe City to provide citizens with security and a sense of safety. At the forefront of this adoption is Surat which became a safe city almost three years ago. This precedent was soon followed by cities such as Mumbai and Pune who have already started functioning as safe cities. Other cities like Hyderabad, Noida and Lucknow are in the process of becoming one.

Anand Navani, country manager, Video Intelligence Solutions, Verint Systems, says, “Smart cities continue to be an important agenda for the central government and preliminary work has already gathered momentum in many cities. Safe and smart cities were also reemphasised by the allocation of R3,205 crore in the recent Union Budget to the development of 100 smart cities across the country by 2020 and some minor reduction in custom duty exemption for some components for CCTV. Although the implementation of this is taking more time than anticipated, many cities are indeed gearing up to make themselves safer.”

The idea of creating a safe city was propelled by the need to provide citizens with security and safety. With urban city threats on a constant rise; aggregate and decipher data from multiple sources to provide critical insights becomes a key game changer. It is important that new generation technologies be used to make citizens safe before the cities are made smart.

Keeping a watchful eye

A smart city essentially has to be a safe city; a secured city derives lots of investment which means more job opportunities and rapid economic growth. “This, along with the modernisation of police force and enabling them to have access to latest technologies so as to increase the response time and act as a force multiplier will be the key use of technology in smart city,” says Navani. He adds: “A smart city basically comprises of better infrastructure, upgraded public transport, self-sufficient and efficient power, water and waste management. However in reality, all these investments need to be financed under the PPP route and a private investor will invest only when the city is safe. A safe city in itself is an important parameter of investor confidence for long term.”

Verint Systems has been instrumental in bringing safe cities in

India in close collaboration with the various governmental and administrative bodies as well as private players. Surat Safe City was envisaged by the government of Gujarat and executed successfully as a public partnership by the Surat Police Commissionerate along with Surat Traffic Education Trust, Innovative Telecom and Verint as a technology partner. Both the Mumbai and Pune Safe Cities were envisaged and implemented by the government of Maharashtra in association with Larsen and Toubro and Allied Digital respectively with Verint as the technology partner.

“All of these projects aim at providing CCTV coverage at critical points across the city with trained officials stationed at a centralised command control centre to view and analyse data collected and implemented their analysis on a real time basis not only to punish criminals but also prevent future crime,” says Navani. “Besides this the company is at the forefront of bringing intelligence and newer technologies like Dispatch and Mobile response solutions in Indian market.”

Future outlook

Modern governments are using various tools like cyber security, smarter policing using the situational awareness platform, integration of technologies like number plate identification, face recognition and lawful interception amongst others. “In fact one the key technologies being implemented today is the face recognition software,” informs Navani. This technology has been currently deployed in public areas like bus stands and railway stations. The Indian Police is deploying CCTNS system across various states which by the integrated use of face recognition with CCTNS system, identifies the blacklisted person as soon as he comes near the camera view, post which the police command and control room can be easily notified about this activity, hastening the response process. “In coming months we may see deployment of many mobile apps by the police enabling common citizens to connect with control room at times of distress,” he adds.

Verint Systems has been collaborating with police and municipal authorities to bring the state-of-the-art situational awareness platform and making customers benefit from its global experience on implementing and running safe cities for more than 20 years. According to Navani, safe cities in not a new phenomenon globally and many cities across the world have adopted the safe city technology, independently or on the way to becoming smart cities. Cities such as Dublin, Amsterdam, Singapore are notable examples of safe cities. Given the various technologies which are being implemented, supported by both the Centre and various State governments, it is safe to say that India is well on its way to not only envisaging but also implementing safe cities effectively.

A decade from now, how will the Indian city infrastructure look like, from a smart and safety point of view? The Verint India head says, “The dream is to have all major cities in India self-sufficient in power, water supply and effective waste management. The citizens will obviously assist in making their cities far cleaner than they are today and hopefully issues like transportation and well-connected roads should not be an issue any more. But to realise all this our police force should have enough tools to react, respond and pre-empt any situations developing in the city. An increased investment is also expected in disaster management and citizen centric e-services at city level.”

NEW LEVELS OF AWARENESS

PUNE

The Pune Safe City project has been set up with the aim to help enhance the safety and security of city inhabitants. It covers an area of 640 square km with 1,250-plus IP cameras at 440 junctions, command and control centre and viewing stations at police stations in the city. From its implementation, there have been several instances of successful detection of events such as theft, traffic violation, chain snatching and high profile robberies and murder cases amongst others. This project has helped in solving the crime in a short time which has resulted in increasing the efficiency of policing.

MUMBAI

The first phase of the pan-Mumbai CCTV camera surveillance network was launched in November last year. For the project, the city has been divided into multiple zones wherein around 1,381 CCTV cameras will be set up in and around South Mumbai in the first phase covering around 434 locations. The pan-Mumbai project envisages installation of 6,000 CCTV cameras in Greater Mumbai at the cost of R949 crore and likely to be completed by mid-2016. Once all three phases of the project get completed, Mumbai Police will have at its disposal an integrated command and control centre which will help in early detection and crime prevention.

SURAT

The initial phase of the Surat Safe City project consisted of 100+ CCTV cameras covering all major traffic junctions along with critical entry and exit points in the city. In subsequent phases, the Surat city police department and Surat Traffic Education Trust plan to extend the coverage in the city, which has a population of approximately 45 lakh, by integrating the project with the proposed state government surveillance and command center network in Gandhinagar. The city administration plans to increase the number of surveillance locations to 5,000 by the end of the project implementation.