Citizen Safety and Security through a blend of IoT / Smart City solutions

Many years back, it was only 10 percent of the population lived in cities. Today over half of the world’s population lives in urban areas and it is expected by 2050, almost 75 percent of the world’s population will be in cities. The vision for smart cities is to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of urban services and there by improve the quality of life. This will include infrastructure development, IT connectivity, e-governance, efficient mobility, energy, water, waste management and citizen safety and security.

In addition to the infrastructure development it is important to utilize the power if Internet and Information technology (IoT) to create cost effective municipal services, improve public transportation, reduce traffic congestion and also engage citizens more in the community. Mega trends are driving the need for connected devices, integrated systems and services across all the areas but the citizen safety and security poses unique challenges.

Mega Trends – India: 31% of India lives in urban areas and contributes to 63% of GDP. This will increase to 40% live in cities and contribute to 75% of the GDP by 2030. This is huge and thanks to the government of India for recognizing the technology needs to cope up with this scale and driving 100 smart cities program in addition to many other initiatives. From the citizen safety and security perspective the main requirements are video surveillance, automated security alerts, public announcements and a coordinated (police, fire and ambulance) emergency response system. Need to address the affordable housing and education for the urban poor too from the social perspective. Most of the Indian cities are equipped with very bare minimal safety and security measures and even the 1 policemen/765 people is below average in comparison with most of the other countries. At the same time the citizen surveys continue to rate the safety and security requirements lower than traffic, transport, water and solid waste issues. The scenario and trends dives the technology need for integration of devices, systems and services on a scalable plug and play technology platform to optimize the performance, add services and create revenue models to meet capital investment and sustainable operations.

Investment and Revenue:
From the capital investment and operations perspective, there is very less possibility to generate the funds through efficiency improvements as the current services are very bare minimal. Additional revenue generation in the safety and security domain through value added services also would be a challenge but there could be a way out. Since the traffic and transport management systems which has its own additional revenue generation/cost saving models and are to be implemented on priority, a possible approach would be to implement them using security cameras and public announcement systems which could also address the citizen safety and security.

The Approach:
The cameras for red light and zebra crossing violation, number plate detection and traffic density monitoring would be able to provide security surveillance too with no/little additional investments.

A camera at the bus stop to monitor the bus stop assets like information displays and kiosks would be able to provide security surveillance, suspected individuals alert and panic button video support too.

The public addressing speakers and displays for traffic management could assist police, fire and ambulance services in emergency situations and also for or security announcements.

Since India is going to witness the explosive smart phone usage, every mobile could assist security surveillance, panic buttons, emergency / disaster assistance and patching authorized mobile phones to the command and control center will make it immensely powerful.

Next steps:

A city will become smart when it is able to provide livable infrastructure, education, health care, jobs, and of course safety and security. This is the time to help the central and state governments, respective ministries and city corporations to prioritize the requirements, revenue models, possibilities and also the organizations start building an integrated, futuristic and scalable technology platform which could cater to multiple applications with little extra cost. It is a great opportunity for technology organizations and citizens to participate, innovate and contribute in this nation building exercise.

About the Author:
Suresh Kumar KK, is the Head of Smart City Engineering from Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Pvt. Limited. He has more than two decades of experience in system/solution architecture, hardware/software development, system integration, verification and deployment across Defense, Automotive, Consumer, Embedded devices and integrated solutions.

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