How AI is driving smarter and safer cities 

The vibrancy of Australian cities has been greatly impacted over the years, where businesses are increasingly leveraging technology to enhance all aspects of urban, professional and social life. In doing so, city leaders are able to improve operations to make our cities as safe and secure as possible.

In many instances, cities have been forced to rethink the measures they already have in place, searching for innovative solutions that can enhance the protection of citizens and deter bad behaviour. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been at the forefront of this conversation, sending the surveillance industry abuzz with new potentials.

AI is too often thought of as a rather amorphous notion, clouded in sophisticated experiments and high-power computational systems we may not fully comprehend. But in reality, AI is all around us. Even if we can’t see it, it has been increasingly used to meet the demands of citizens in the digital era. From the chatbox of your favourite eCommerce site or speaking to a virtual assistant from your bank, AI has infiltrated every part of our lives.

Smart cities rebuilding urban life

The social and economic fallout of COVID-19 has ushered in an opportunity for city authorities to drive smarter cities to enhance livability, workability and sustainability. Smart cities often leverage digital intelligence to solve various problems, where in some instances, these technologies and applications can improve key quality of life indicators by 10 to 30%.

The affordances of AI, machine learning and deep learning in video surveillance have continued to grow, enabling us to increasingly ‘teach’ our cameras to be far more intuitive about what is happening in the scene and analyse it in real time. We are seeing more and more organisations turning to such innovations and cutting-edge technologies to ensure the safety of public spaces and surrounds.

For instance, AI technology has allowed Axis to power solutions that are designed to detect various objects as well as particular weather events such as bushfires, lightning strikes and flooding. Axis worked in collaboration with EYEfi on a solution for Melbourne Water to accurately detect lightning strikes as well as pinpointing geographic location of a fire, through the use of thermal sensors and high-precision visual spectrum cameras.

The solution not only provided 24/7 surveillance but provided continuous reports and updates in real time through analytics and AI-powered capabilities. Similarly, in response to flood risks, new solutions in partnership with Tenevia are being increasingly utilised for accurate water-level monitoring and detection in high-risk flood areas.

AI cameras driving the transport network

Additionally, building safe and intelligent transport networks remains at the heart of many smart city initiatives in Australia, with citizens returning back to normal work routines and the like. There are various opportunities to leverage technology to optimise and create efficiencies in this industry, not only in the area of public safety but also through analytics of open roads and rail to address various concerns such as congestion.

Without sufficient measures in place, public transport can often remain the place where people feel most vulnerable. In many cases, cameras have been placed among public transport services to deter and monitor for criminal activity such as attacks or theft. AI cameras are equipped with intelligent software that allows us to ‘train’ the system to classify certain objects automatically. If a person shows suspicious behaviour, cameras can automatically detect this and trigger automated responses to security and vehicle operators to investigate the situation.

With 95% of surveillance footage among public monitoring systems having never been watched, it’s important for these systems to have the necessary analytics to paint the picture for actionable intelligence.

By understanding how to utilise this data to its full potential, cities and transport operators are able to accurately and efficiently monitor the transport network such as detecting how many vehicles are on the road and where congestion lies through tools such as heat mapping. This can assist with future road implementation planning and initiatives to reduce congestion and carbon emissions across our cities.

The future of surveillance is bright

The benefits of AI in security technology are not only limited to transportation but can further help cities bolster their public safety initiatives. In leveraging AI, cities are able to futureproof their surroundings for generations of urban-dwellers to come.

Image credit: iStock.com/metamorworks