From forgotten files, pulling out a surveillance system for city

Karachi
The Karachi police chief is trying to restart work on setting up a surveillance system in city –– a project envisaging a network of CCTV cameras across the metropolis that has been swept aside for the last couple of years.
The project was introduced by the former additional IGP Karachi Saud Ahmed Mirza as a step to curb terrorist activities.
During his tenure, a monitoring room was constructed at the central police office for this purpose. But after Mirza’s transfer, the project was stopped.
The police department relies on the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s command and control centre for monitoring.
The surveillance system project was prepared by senior police officers after working hard on it for two years without any government assistance. They had also saved millions of rupees by not availing the services of a foreign or domestic consultancy firm and designed the entire system themselves.
After Mirza was transferred, some cameras were installed but with only a two mega pixel resolution, they do not prove to be of much assistance to police.
The present additional IGP Karachi, Ghulam Qadir Thebo, has been trying to convince government high-ups that work on the project should be restarted.
The system will be based on cutting-edge technology with smart search features, automated number plate reader, video-link etc. Once the government gives the nod, the foreign firms will be invited to participate in a biding process.
Initially, the project will cover 174 sites across the city, mostly sensitive and commercial zones including government installations.
The system will be used to monitor vehicles plying on the roads as well as those entering and exiting the city. The system will be operated through the new command and control system at the central police office and a secondary one for emergency backup.
In the first phase, around 1,000 cameras will be installed, each site having a cluster of four megapixel IP cameras that have a resolution at least three times higher than the analog CCTV ones and one pan–tilt–zoom (PTZ) camera.
These cameras will be equipped with day and night vision and infrared illuminators. They will also have a data bank capable of storing video recordings for 31 days.
The PTZ cameras will be capable of zooming in and out by 36 times.
In case of a power outage, each camera will have a back-up of 12 hours through a UPS facility. They will also have weatherproof casings and an alarm system. They will be able to locate a suspect in an assembly of 500 or more people.
They will also be sued to detect arson activity and suspicious packages.
The facility of smart search will help police to backtrack and identify criminals by going through footage of several days in just a few hours
In case any medium of connectivity or fiber is cut, the cameras will switch on wirelessly.
Another important feature of the system will be the computer aided dispatch (CAD). The operators will use the CAD to receive distress call and dispatch police patrol vehicles nearest to the location with the help of GSM.
For this purpose, 500 personal digital assistant sets with GPS for CAD solutions, a remote playback system, a PTZ control via directional buttons, and message transmission to mobile vehicle on multi-functions display device, an automatic message alerts via email and also automatic message alert via SMS will be used.