Securing cities calls for the coordination of CCTVs, monitoring systems, and rescue forces. This is a job for an emerging set of physical management information systems (PSIMs).
Case in point: Baltimore, Maryland.
It was a dream come true for city officials when their city was picked to host five annual IZOD Indy Car Series Grand Prix races, starting in 2011. But for this city, with one of the nation's highest crime rates, the race brought not just projected revenue but responsibility. At stake was the safety of over 100,000 visitors, sponsors, and fans.
Baltimore Grand Prix driver Marco Andretti hydrates during the event in 2011. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)
It was time to upgrade Baltimore's five-year-old "CityWatch" monitoring system, a command center that tied together video feeds from various city locations with things like gunshot monitors, using the information to trigger police dispatches. Hosting a big race meant the city would have to expand CityWatch to coordinate a range of other functions, such as traffic management. This required integration with lots of agencies, devices, and systems.
City officials picked a PSIM vendor named VidSys to set up hundreds of command centers throughout the city, tying in video and data from transportation, police, and public safety systems, not only within Baltimore but from from state agencies.
A VidSys whitepaper describes the result:
In total, the project involved integrating 779 CCTV/NVR/DVR feeds from several participating agencies around the race area. These systems came from the Baltimore City Police Department, City DOT, CitiWatch, City Fire Department, FBI, State DOT, State Highway Administration, Maryland Transit Authority, and Hilton Hotel, as well as GPS based responder locations, that provided real time data in support of activities taking place in the City....
For example, the software was able to identify stopped vehicles, free traffic congestion, and find people on rooftops deemed unsafe.
"One complete view of unfolding situations allowed our first responders from multiple agencies to more quickly and efficiently identify and verify situations and work with each other for a faster, more coordinated response," said Sheryl Goldstein, Director of the Mayor's Office on Criminal Justice, in a prepared statement.
PSIM vendor VidSys consolidates multiple surveillance and monitoring views into a single console. (Photo: VidSys.)
The City of Baltimore lucked out with the VidSys software in another way: "The system did not cost the City anything except for the internal costs associated with it (our own engineers who had to dedicate their time and a couple of small equipment purchases)," wrote Stefan Thomas Waters, director of technical operations for the CitiWatch project, in an email to me. "All of the costs associated with VYDSYS and their integrator at the time (Gantech) was waived as this was deemed a 'free demo' for the City."
Baltimore is happy with the system. "We... will be/are moving forward," states Waters. "In fact, we have used VIDSYS for a number of other events since the initial Grand Prix including the second Grand Prix and the Sailabration event."
In November 2011, Maryland officials, including Gov. Martin O'Malley and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (flanking logo), unveiled the logo for the Star-Spangled Sailabration, which took place June 2012. The city deployed the PSIM system from VidSys during this event.
Baltimore is just one example of PSIM applied to managing city safety. Other PSIM vendors, including ADT, CNL Software, and Nice, say business is brisk.
Their claims are supported by research. According to a report released this summer by Frost & Sullivan, PSIM sales worldwide were just $142.9 million in 2011 but could reach $2.79 billion by 2021. IMS Research says that while the global PSIM market scored less than $100 million in revenue in 2011, sales had doubled since 2009.
The PSIM vendors are challenged to get their message across to city council buyers, experts say. The overall trend continues to favor vertical applications of the technologty -- to water and transportation system, for instance. Further, the integration work required to link a central console system to a range of monitoring devices is costly, and connecting to older analog equipment can be challenging.
But cities are starting to understand the value of a city-wide, integration PSIM system. "As the market is maturing, people are starting to ask the right questions,” said James Chong, founder and CTO of VidSys, in an interview this summer. "It used to be that it was only physical security professionals who wanted to know what else a PSIM system could provide to an organization. Now inquiries are coming from the IT systems management side as well."
Re: Their claims are supported by research. This is a pretty nice traffic monitoring setup. If I lived there, I would certainly make practical use of these.
Re: Their claims are supported by research. Not sure whether CCTV privacy laws have even been extended beyond simple warning signs that you're being watched. Kind of like "this conversation may be recorded for training purposes."
Re: Their claims are supported by research. If you take a look at this then it should show the CCTV traffic cameras in and around London. The images refresh every few minutes so you can't watch in real time but you can easily check the motorways for problems before you set out. In fact there's an app which sends the same images to your phone.
These cameras are a tiny proportion of the CCTV network however.
Re: Their claims are supported by research. ikr. Fully complicated. I mean... if I am caught pulling my car over to help someone push a car out of traffic, that's one thing, and well met! Thought I can't help but wonder, if it's 2am, I'm in a strange city, in a dangerous neighborhood, and I slowly blow through a red light, would I be prosecuted for running the red light when there's clearly no one else around and I was captured on CCTV? Tricky.
As the local volunteer coordinator for the Juneau CERT team, there's loads of liability and technical concerns for how best we can help under the circumstance of a "real" emergency. Things as simple as, "How do we get activated to respond to assist first responders?" There are complex things such as, "If I help someone, then what protections do I have under the good samaritan laws?"
All kinds of valid concerns with a volunteer group that is being put into a place where people are... exposed, at risk, vulnerable.
I look forward to seeing how the CCTV implementations here in the states will proceed.
Re: Their claims are supported by research. @Jeremy, re: "Would such a civil group, under the jurisdiction of the Fire Services, be able to review these CCTV feeds to get a view of the troubles that could be addressed first in their own CCTV captured neighborhood?"
Interesting question, Jeremy. I think individual cities are going to need to establish different sets of regulations around the use (and abuse) of CCTVs. The scenario you outline suggests to me that CERT members should be able to access the footage, but I think that limitations would need to be clearly spelled out.
I feel all of this technology intended to secure the public needs to come along with regulations and software that secure the tech itself. In short, complicated!
Re: Their claims are supported by research. Sorry that My scenario isn't clear.
What I'm really asking is whether or not citizens are evern qualified to have access to the CCTV. Closed Circuit usually implies that the information isn't publicly available; however, I would suggest that a gated community has a CCTV camera on the gate, and are able to view "Channel 1" to see who is at the gate.
Do City planners with CCTV have them reserved for city employees, or are citizens able to access the CCTV through some mechanism?
C.E.R.T. Community Emergency Response Team (citizencorps.com/cert) is a Citizen-driven initiative that is usually sponsored by the Fire Department, or Emergency Planning team. The CERT people are _not_ employed by the city, but would have justifiable reasons to access the CCTV, under the proper circumstance.
The scenario that I built was specifically meant to show a _citizen_ needing access to CCTV for the betterment of the community, instead of an employee of the municipality.
Very interesting, honestly. I've been interested in CCTV, since I found out that London has such an extensive CCTV system years ago. I find such initiatives quite intriguing, as I don't mind letting go of my "public" privacy, I have no problem with it.
Re: Their claims are supported by research. Hi Jeremy. I can't answer for Baltimore, obviously, but the publications about this implementation say it was meant to tie in various government agencies, not just a couple of city departments. Whether that has actually been implemented, I don't know. I will try to find out though.
I am not really following the scenaio you describe. It seems as though city employees might be able to use the CCTV system to look into their own interests. Is that right?
Privacy continues to be an issue for most all surveillance apps. But the tradeoff is, of course, that you can't really protect a population unless you can see what's going on.
Their claims are supported by research. I'd like to see numbers for how EMS responses improved from say... the previous decades averages, in direct comparrison to the first year after implementation, not related to the race event, just to see if the new system is improving EMS responses to all types of Emergency, or just specific types (fire, traffic-related, et cetera.)
Are these CCTV cameras only available to city employees, a specific branch, such as the Emergency Planning group, or available to an local, state, or federal agency. Further, if the CCTV is a public asset, are there plans on ever making the CCTV public?
I know that the #1 concern I hear about CCTV for cities is privacy, and the #1 "problem solved" is said to be crime, but I would like to know if that is just rhetoric and anecdote, or if these claims are based on something factual.
Here's a scenario:
Flood happens in a population 500k city with CCTV. EMS is tied up with critical concerns and issues. Let's say a few small building fires, and a ruptured gas main, to get as many EMS teams involved as possible.
The local CERT members, after making sure that their own homes and family are safe, are concerned about their neighborhood. While it is a community/civil group, most CERT programs are under the jurisdiction of local Fire Department(s).
Would such a civil group, under the jurisdiction of the Fire Services, be able to review these CCTV feeds to get a view of the troubles that could be addressed first in their own CCTV captured neighborhood?
I don't mean to generate a flood of scenario definitions, but this one is a pretty straight forward, justifiable opportunity for a Civilian group to have a "real" need to review the CCTV feeds, if they are active and stable.
If the above scenario is invalid, then is there any scenario where public access to the CCTV would be considered?
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