Milestone and IBM promote the smart city of Katowice with the Kasmia project

The integrated video monitoring and management systems of Milestone and the artificial intelligence technology of IBM continue to transform the Polish city of Katowice.

Improving quality of life with integrated and intelligent security solutions is one of the objectives that has been carried out for years in the city of Katowice, in Poland, which has one of the most advanced and flexible systems.

In this smart city, they have the video management platform of Milestone, from which the monitoring of installed surveillance cameras is centralized and other services are coordinated.

The first step to build this video monitoring system to protect the city began in 2001, con la instalación de las primeras cámaras de videovigilancia (en concreto con dieciséis dispositivos analógicos) en centros estratégicos de Katowice, con el envío de imágenes al centro de Policía Municipal.

Sistemas con inteligencia artificial

Posteriormente y como parte del plan estratégico para convertirse en una ciudad inteligente -el denominado proyecto Kismia: Katowice intelligent monitoring and analysis system– se han realizado nuevas inversiones en dispositivos que, in 2021, suponen unas trescientas cámaras distribuidas por más de 160 Km2 de la ciudad.

How do you explain Mirosław Cygan, jefe del departamento de gestión de crisis del Ayuntamiento de Katowice y coordinador del proyecto Kismia, “adding more cameras made us think about how to operate more effectively using artificial intelligence”.

Created in 2017, he monitoring center “covers key locations in the city center and other districts -he adds-, as well as sixteen family activity areas. Now we have ten traffic monitoring points in operation and we can expand the system to more than a thousand cameras”.

Connection by FO

When the Kismia project started, one was created n, to which all the centers and many points in the city are connected. The goal was to improve the effectiveness of monitoring operators and city services with better coordination.

“Kismia was created with the future in mind. The construction of the FO network, with flexible monitoring points and a unified data center has been a success. Katowice has a project engineer who is technologically certified and supported by Milestone Systems, which facilitates the development of a city strategy in the coming years”, points out Marcin Palka, from the IT and crisis management department.

This integrated system provides clearer guidance on incidents and efficient security support cooperation, which is now being expanded to monitor new areas, such as park-and-ride transfer centers (park and ride).

“Katowice is a city of innovative solutions and implementation of new technologies - states Marcin Krupa, its mayor-. We are becoming an increasingly smarter city in many areas. We were the first in Poland to create this intelligent video monitoring system on this scale and, sin duda, las Milestone XProtect it helps to increase the level of security”.

Management platform

The implementation of this system was made possible thanks to several components. The software of the IBM Intelligent Operations Center was used as an operational support module, y su Intelligent video analytics as a module for analyzing recorded images.

The video material is handled with the Milestone XProtect Corporate management platform to record, store, share content and manage the cameras seamlessly. The system is designed for different types and situations of threat and immediately alerts the operator, which shortens the time needed to respond to on-site services or voice communications.

This includes, among others, people, objects, animals that are in family activity areas (parks, play areas, etc.), crowds gathered in public spaces (critical during pandemics), vehicle collisions and parking in prohibited areas and driving in the wrong direction, damage caused by wind, floods, etc.

Thanks to it, operators detect threat situations more easily and quickly and determine how to address an incident. The system also supports city traffic control.

LPR gateways (license plate recognition) they show the flow of traffic and help detect fleeing or stolen vehicles, among other elements. The operator can also indicate to the appropriate services in which direction a car is going.

The effectiveness of the Kismia system has been proven with the total detection of crimes in the city of 300.000 inhabitants (the largest metropolitan population is 5.300.000), with the decrease in crimes and robberies.