The Third Eye: Managing the Traffic

Central Monitoring System in Kerala

Kerala Police recently launched first-of-its-kind surveillance system in Kochi. The Central Intrusion Monitoring System (CIMS) will be equipped with special hardware and network video management software to communicate with the intrusion alarm systems and cameras. The sensor sends an alert to the control room in case of a threat and also trips an alarm within seconds in the video management system.

The CIMS software will also automatically save the recording of the intrusion. The alarm systems would be installed at different zones with special censors in each zone and can help determine the threat with the zone information. The monitoring station in the control room will then check the relevant surveillance camera, thus informing the police in the particular zone to reach the premises under threat. The information that is relayed includes district, address, contact details, map, nearest police station etc. Facial recognition feature will also be added eventually so that the police are alerted if a person with a criminal background is recognised by the camera.

In a bid to catch those drivers who slow down when they spot cameras, the police can now track the time taken by the driver between cameras. R Sreelekha, Additional Director General of Police, Social Policing and Traffic, Kerela, said, “The Kerala Motor Vehicle has come up with a new plan to get drivers to adhere to traffic rules: by putting up a new type of traffic camera that will help catch those who slow down for the cameras, but tend to speed otherwise. The new cameras will record the time taken by the driver to cross the distance between the cameras.

“Unlike surveillance cameras usually seen on the highways, these speed control cameras are installed at a specific distance from each other. They will capture images of speeding vehicles and send it to a central server in Kochi. The images will then be printed and analysed to nab the offenders. There will be separate traffic control rooms set up to monitor speeding vehicles.”

Making Hyderabad ‘Safe’ & ‘Secure’

Technology is once again proving to be a crucial tool for the Hyderabad Police. The traffic wing of the city police, which has been relying heavily upon the CCTV network across the city for various uses, is now making it one of the primary forms of enforcement of traffic laws.

As part of its efforts to make Hyderabad, a ‘safe and secure’ city, the Hyderabad Police has recently launched vehicle mounted CCTV cameras that provide a 360 degree panoramic view. These vehicles will be linked to ‘Command Control Centre’ from where the footage captured will be monitored. The footage can be stored for 15-days.

Anil Kumar, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Hyderabad said, “This project will help in making Hyderabad a ‘safe and secure’ city. Under the mobile surveillance, the vehicles mounted with CCTV cameras will film after moving in different locations. The proposed Integrated Traffic Management System (ITMS) system too would come as a major deterrent to traffic law violators. The city would have nearly 4,500 CCTVs under ITMS and the Safe and Smart City concepts.

“About 1,000 CCTV cameras will be installed at intersections under the ITMS project, while 3,500 cameras are going to be installed under the Safe and Smart City concept,” he said.

The Government of Telangana has initiated a series of measures to upgrade the standards of safety and security in Hyderabad with an objective to transform the City into a Global city and the City Police into a Global City Police.

As part of the effort to provide Electronic Video Surveillance System, the Police department has initiated various citizens’s safety and security programs such as city-wide Safe City Project, Community CCTV Project and Nenusaitham Project. Anil Kumar said, “ALVR technology was introduced three-four years back and since then the system has been working successfully. On an average day, around 500 cases are booked for Red Light jumping. Nearly 1000 cases are booked every day for different road violations like Stop line jumping and others through surveillance. And close to 400 cases are booked every day for over- speeding. We have seen major impact in the City by installing the technology; citizens/ drivers are vigilant on roads and even at night time they will wait or stop at the see red-light. We have seen a drastic change in the behaviour or greater compliance on the part of citizens. We have procured the system from Matrix. We want to advance to the next level of technology, which can detect violations at one go: Stop line Crossing/Jumping, Red Light Jumping, Over Speeding, Zig- Zag Driving and Wrong-side Driving. All these violations can be identified with the help of the same technology.”