CM Murad approves Rs5.5bn to launch Smart Safe City project

KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah approved Rs5.5 billion agreement between the Sindh Police Department and NRTC to launch the first phase of the Smart Safe City project in Karachi’s red zone.

The approval of the agreement was made in a meeting held at CM House and was attended by Home Minister Zia Lanjar, Mayor Karachi Murtaza Wahab, Chief Secretary Asif Hyder Shah, IG Police Riffat Mukhtar, MD NRTC Brigadier Asim Ishaque, DG Sindh Safe Cities Authority asif Aijaz Shaikh, and others.

The CM was told that under the Smart Safe City project, 1300 CCTV cameras would be installed at 300 sites in Red Zone & Airport Corridor with FR and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) capability within eight hours solar back.

The cameras would be linked to the Command and Control Center of the Central Police Office, with plans to establish a permanent C&CC at the Karachi Police Office.

The smart safe city project would have the capability of facial recognition and a number plate recognition system.

The system will facilitate monitoring of hospitals for criminals/suspects, multiple camera tracking against suspects and response, database management of criminals and integration with National, Criminal, and other databases.

The chief minister said that the project was much awaited and finally it was seeing the day of light and hoped that the project would achieve its purpose.

“I want NRTC to complete the first phase in the one and half years,” he said. The NRTC had given him two years to complete the first phase.

The safety system is a safeguard of the city through Artificial Intelligence based digital transformation. The CM said that Karachi has more than 20.38 million population which would increase further by 20230. Therefore, to control crime and critical incidents, public unrest, disaster management and traffic safety were his top priorities and their solution lay in technological integration and cyber security.

The conceptual framework of the smart safe city Karachi includes swift delivery- response and services- digital forensics and analysis of incidents, situational awareness through one window operation, real-time monitoring of activities, systematised traffic & crowed examining and monitoring, timely action against the untoward incident and intelligent data co-relations from a database.

Murad Ali Shah termed the launching of the first phase as good news for the people of the City.