City surveillance is increasingly becoming an important vertical for large systems integrators in Asia, thanks to a rise in security awareness and living standards in the region. With the arrival of integrated IP-based solutions, the segment has opened up opportunities for companies from various backgrounds and experie
City surveillance is increasingly becoming an important vertical for large systems integrators in Asia, thanks to a rise in security awareness and living standards in the region. With the arrival of integrated IP-based solutions, the segment has opened up opportunities for companies from various backgrounds and experiences.
One such company is NCS, a major information and communications technology service provider in Asia Pacific. a&s recently caught up with Ferry Chung, Vice President of Smart and Safe City Centre of Excellence of NCS, to learn more about the company's views on initiatives to make Asian cities safer and smarter.
a&s: Do you see an increase in Asian city surveillance projects? What are some of the factors that are driving the growth of such projects?
Chung: Asia is home to some of the largest cities such as Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo with millions of inhabitants. With increasing safety and security threats in rapidly urbanized cities, governments are escalating the development of robust infrastructure and defining new policies to pave the way for a more integrated, collaborated and sustainable environment. Moving forward, public safety and security is definitely high on the agenda in the public sector and investment in technologies is expected to increase.
The rise of smart cities (i.e. cities with ubiquitous sensors, wide-spread connectivity and voluminous amount of data) posed new challenges, such as unprecedented terrorist acts and increased multi-prone cyber-attacks, to law enforcement agencies. Not only do cities need to increase investment boost public security, they need to leverage next-generation security systems and state-of-art technologies to fuse data from various sources and linked analysis technology to enhance policing activities.
a&s: Do you expect city surveillance projects in your country to increase in 2016, compared to 2015?
Chung: We understand that many major cities in the region have deployed thousands of sensors throughout the cities to monitor noise, humidity and water level, as well as cameras to monitor public and traffic safety condition. We look forward to playing a major part in bringing advanced technology to improve the quality of living and security in an urban environment.
a&s: What are some of the unique technology deployed in city surveillance?
Chung: One of NCS' notable solutions is ‘smart policing'. Leveraging predictive and prescriptive analytics algorithm, smart policing engine is able to predict where and when certain crimes will be committed. These insights help law enforcers to understand where crime types are most likely to occur so that they can easily pre-plan and optimise their resources on the ground accordingly.
a&s: What are some other big challenges for implementing a city surveillance project? How do you plan to overcome them?
Chung: In my opinion, the 2 key challenges are:
i) Ensuring that there are sufficient bandwidth in connectivity for data transmission, and
ii) Management of massive amount of structure and unstructured data.
The demand for bandwidth will always be on the rise. There is a need to diversify dependency on core network and to leverage alternative networks, such as low-powered network and TV white-space, while ensuring heterogeneous operation across the various communication platforms.
As for data management, there is a need to design an open data management and exchange platform, coupled with clear guidelines and policies on data usage, to bring about actionable intelligence within the organization and externally, facilitate closer collaboration between and among agencies which are using disparate systems.