Johannesburg city mayor Amos Masondo has unveiled a CCTV surveillance centre, aimed at improving the efficiency of the city's crime-fighting initiatives.
The R42 million system will be managed by the Joburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) and operated by Omega Risk Solutions. Earlier this year, the JMPD ran a trial of the system, using footage captured from 216 CCTV cameras around the CBD to combat muggings, murders, car crashes, and smash and grabs.
Speaking at the opening of the centre, public safety EMC Firoz Cachalia said technology is an essential element of the city's fight against crime. “Because of the high levels of crime that we face in our society and our efforts to improve public safety, new technologies certainly have an important role to play.”
The CCTV camera network, consisting of 700 cameras, situated at various locations in the inner city, is now fully operational. The network will cover the entire CBD, Braamfontein, Doornfontein and Joubert Park. The cameras can zoom into a range of 3km, said Masondo, adding that it will allow the city to extend its surveillance capacity.
Thys le Grange, technical director of Omega Risk Solutions, says the system is one of the most powerful in Africa.
“The complete system is a digital virtual matrix with less than 100-milliseconds latency. Our operators literally keep an eye on things happening around the city by viewing the 40-inch monitors on a constant basis. The communication capacity is a point-to-point fibre-optic system, which is regarded as the most powerful communications system in terms of bandwidth capacity per square kilometre on the continent.”
He adds that the camera network is linked to the hi-tech macro surveillance system and the average response time from the JMPD, South African Police Service and other emergency service reaction units, to any incident captured on monitoring screens, is 60 seconds.
Apart from alerting the JMPD to crimes, the cameras will also inform the department about traffic congestion, traffic lights that are not working, manhole covers that have been stolen, overgrown trees that need to be cut, vandalism and theft, Masondo adds.
The data from the cameras is captured on hard disk with a capacity of 420TB and is stored for 60 days in high-resolution.
The centre will also feature an Interactive Remote Monitoring Control Room - which will be used to monitor camera footage of registered users' properties. The system will also link surveillance cameras to a monitoring room and emergency teams will respond to panic buttons activated at users' residences.
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