New Delhi, Sept 24: The government’s 100 Smart Cities project has opened various opportunities for IT companies. As per the publicly available information, the States and Centre will fund the project having a majority stake and then under the PPP Model a minority stake holder will be appointed for additional funding up to a maximum of 49%.
According to Verint Systems, a smart city essentially has to be a Safe City because a secured city gets lots of investment which means more job opportunities and rapid economic growth. This, along with the modernization of police force to increase the response time.
Explaining the security aspect of smart cities, Anand Navani, Country Manager, Verint Systems, said, “Modern governments are using various tools like Cyber Security and Smarter Policing using the Situational Awareness Platform, Integrating technologies like Number Plate Identification, Face Recognition and Lawful Interception among others. The facial recognition software technology has been currently deployed in public areas like bus stands and railway stations. The Indian police is deploying CCTNS system across various States which by the integrated use of Face Recognition with CCTNS system identifies the blacklisted person as soon as he comes near the camera view post and the Police Command and Control room can be easily notified about this activity, hastening the response process.”
A Smart City comprises better infrastructure, upgraded public transport, self-sufficient and efficient power, water and waste management. However in reality, all these investments need to be financed under the private public partnership (PPP) route and a private investor will invest only when the city is safe. Hence, a Smart City needs to be safe first.
Verint Systems has been collaborating with Police and Municipal authorities to bring the state-of-the-art situational awareness platform to offer customers the benefit of its global experience on implementing and running safe cities for more than 20 years.