Mexico City has completed one of the fastest-ever integrated deployments of a connected city-wide surveillance system. The Mexican capital has seen 13,720 LTE-based video cameras installed in four months.
Austin-based video surveillance firm Eagle Eye Networks said it was installing 250 cameras per day in the city at the peak of the deployment, even as the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic swept regions of the world. The cameras are now live and connected, for remote monitoring, it said.
The solution incorporates a video platform from Eagle Eye Networks with an open API, enabling new technologies and applications to be integrated as required. A press release referenced advanced analytics for license plate recognition and searching.
The platform integrates fixed, mobile, body-worn, and vehicle-based cameras into one interface. The project is part of Mexico City’s so-called C5 mass surveillance initiative; it also contributes to the city’s larger Citizen Safety mobile application, which enables facilitates content sharing for neighbourhood watch and panic buttons schemes.
Dean Drako, chief executive at Eagle Eye Networks, said: “When deploying a city-wide surveillance project, scalability, retention, and cellular transmission must be considered. Eagle Eye’s cloud video retention and massive on demand scalability make it ideal for large scale deployments.
“To operate your own large data centre system for video recording is expensive and challenging. We provide a more robust and lower cost answer for large scale deployments. Furthermore, our open platform provides a future proof solution, integrating AI, video analytics, and advanced search at the click of a mouse.”
The company worked with Mexico-based reseller Omnicloud on the rollout. Jaime Abad Valdenebro, chief executive at Omnicloud, said platform-based integration of IoT is crucial to its success.
“Effective citywide surveillance is more than installing cameras in a few key locations, it’s about creating a platform that meets the unique needs of each municipality,” he commented.
