To run safe and efficient cities on a daily basis, traffic control systems and operators must be in tune with public surveillance systems and first responders to gather and share information.
To run safe and efficient cities on a daily basis, traffic control systems and operators must be in tune with public surveillance systems and first responders to gather and share information.
We see city surveillance projects in Asia revolving around traffic monitoring and road safety. In China especially, video surveillance solutions for safety and requirements are accommodating for growing traffic,” said Peter McKee, Global Marketing Director of Mobotix. While Asia might be a chief purveyor of traffic monitoring, cities elsewhere in the world in the United States, Latin America and Europe are seeing public surveillance tied to traffic monitoring systems. Keeping track of highways and junctions, import and export of goods and daily movement of people going to and from work or leisure are all part of helping society run smoothly, said Lars Thinggaard, CEO of Milestone Systems, and IP video surveillance is the monitoring tool that helps do the job better.
With 360 degree view cameras and intelligent analytics like license plate recognition, tracking, identifying traffic density and motion detection, the capabilities of traffic monitoring stretch far and wide. Integrated with city surveillance, first responders can strengthen their practice, catching perpetrators and tracking their vehicle's movements.
Junction Monitoring
Multigated junctions, with several entry and exit points see accidents, collisions, fights and eventually law suits as frequent occurrences. It is therefore essential for junctions to be properly monitored.
Small and light megapixel cameras can be mounted on a pole, wall or harness to give operators a 360 degree view to monitor cars; with license plate recognition, cameras effectively record plates and the system can even recognize, through quick database searches, if cars in the junction have unpaid tickets, said McKee. License plate recognition systems integrated with public surveillance systems are more likely to catch a stolen car via recognition of its license plate.
Using event management metadata, cameras positioned high above large junctions can track and classify types of vehicle (bus, bicycle, van, car), and monitor their average speed and direction of travel. This information can be used to do a number of useful things; traffic monitoring authorities can model the data to redesign a better junction, or alter traffic signals to reduce flow, said Michael Wilks, CEO of Scyron.
Highway Surveillance
For safer traffic management on highways, behavioral analytics can notify traffic managers when traffic is heaviest. “You want to maximize the effectiveness of high occupancy vehicle lanes so you can make sure these and any extra lanes are open to traffic at times they're most needed,” said Ed Troha, MD of Global Marketing, ObjectVideo.
Traffic surveillance extended to highways also pushes people to abide by speed limits; “people act differently when they think they are being monitored and it is often impractical and sometimes dangerous to put officers on site for these types of traffic violations,” Lee Caswell, Cofounder and CMO of Pivot3.