Helping Gujarat’s cultural capital become a new-age smart city.

The Background

The Smart Cities Mission is an innovative initiative by the Government of India to drive economic growth & improve the quality of life of people. It aims to achieve this by enabling local development and harnessing technology as a means to create smart outcomes for citizens. A hundred cities across the country were shortlisted by the government, which were to be promoted as 'Smart Cities'. Vadodara was selected among those 100 cities to be developed as a smart city in India, to enhance economic growth & improve the quality of life of people by enabling local area development, deploying smart solutions & harnessing technology.

The Challenge

With a population of approximately 2.39 million, Vadodara is the third largest city of Gujarat, and a major industrial, cultural and educational hub of western India. The city is compact and crowded, with a vibrant cultural life that draws a lot of traffic. It is vulnerable to situations of overcrowding, road accidents, criminal activity, and natural disasters. Vadodara Smart City Limited wanted to heighten safety for its citizens and visitors, along with optimising traffic management, without disrupting daily lives. To this end, they sought a state-of-the-art, open platform that could expand in phases, in sync with the city's growth.

The key elements of this solution included the following:

• 1. State-of-the-art Al-powered Videonetics VMS and Video Analytics to provide continuous viewing and recording, enabling security operators and law enforcement to proactively identify, and effectively respond to, events to mitigate their impact. Specifically, now the law enforcement authorities can automatically detect overcrowding, unattended baggage, and perimeter intrusions, even under the cover of darkness.
• 2. Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system across 15 traffic junctions in Vadodara, to identify suspected / unwanted vehicles and non-standardised number plates, as well as to generate detailed reports on vehicle movements, and much more.
• 3. Command Control Centre, to provide a bird's eye view to operators, about what is happening across the city. From traffic control to citizen security, operators remain alert and ready. With greater situational awareness, municipality officials are proactively responding to incidents such as garbage overfill, incidents of water-logging, traffic congestions, hazardous debris on roadways, illegal parking, and more.