Bhubaneswar, Dec. 27: An advanced surveillance system for commuters is what the city is going to have in place within three months.

Honeywell, a multinational firm, has partnered with Odisha police to provide advanced traffic management and safety related features across Bhubaneswar. The system will help to control traffic, boost security, prevent crimes and maintain law and order on city roads. This is in line with the vision of smart city Bhubaneswar.

The firm's project will provide 28 strategic locations in the city with as many as 114 integrated closed-circuit television cameras. It will also install automatic number plate recognition system. Both the systems would work using a command and control system that provides a common operating picture, interactive control, event correlation and mobile van surveillance at the police headquarters.

Automatic number plate recognition system is a technology that uses optical character recognition on images to read the vehicle registration plates. The system is used by police forces around the world for law enforcement purposes, including to check if a vehicle is registered or licensed. It can be used to store the images captured by cameras, as well as the text from the licence plate. It is also configured in a way to store the driver's photograph as well.

The system would help keep a track of vehicles in the city and also check frequent theft of two-wheelers. Urban planner Aseem Mishra said such systems were being used widely in the developed countries and had been successful in checking vehicle thefts and keeping tabs on cars involved in criminal activities. "The number of vehicles on the city roads is increasing substantially. So, there is a need to ensure that traffic and law violators are not able to escape from the clutches of police," he said.

The firm will also install mobile cameras and digital video recorders in the police control room vans across the city. The system would be installed in as many as 33 such vans in a week. These cameras will transmit recordings at a pre-determined frequency to the command centres at the police headquarters. The cameras are designed to withstand high temperatures as it is essential in view of the harsh summer in the city.

Besides, the firm will install red-light violation detection systems and an advanced video analytics to help alert the police about traffic violations and enable prompt incident management.

Aseem Joshi, regional general manager of Honeywell Building Solutions, India, said the firm would ensure that all these systems worked seamlessly by providing expertise to the police department.

Bhubaneswar deputy commissioner of police Satyabrata Bhoi said the system would make law and order and traffic management seamless. He said selected police officers would be trained by the firm's experts on ways to handle the systems.