Market Know-how: How to survive in a metropolis

Such car companies as Nissan and Volvo have practically simultaneously announced the creation of devices that do not allow drunk drivers to drive a car by blocking the ignition. But while these technologies are being introduced, cities are engaged in the creation of global systems of video observation. Penalties for infringements of the Highway Code caught on camera are dispatched by mail together with documentary acknowledgement – photos.

It is sad, but the larger and more urbanized the settlement is, the more risks there are for people. Water and food safety, epidemiological safety, the reliability of energy and heat supplies, water drainage and questions of the cleanliness of air and the organization of traffic are just some of the global city problems that have been taken under control in the 20th century. Every object that makes the usual municipal convenient, also is an object of high risk (failure of water drainage in Krasnogorsk, for example), but here it is clear who is responsible for what and who will respond in the case of failure – the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the emergency services, etc.

The risks of city people

A city, incorporating all the new technologies and achievements of progress, creates new threats to the health and life of the city people. For example, having organized traffic (an important business) and having developed a network of roads, having made personal auto transport accessible to citizens, megacities have smog because of the imperfection of car engines.

Auto transport, noted by experts as one of the ten most important achievements of progress in the last century, here has one of the top places in the rating of other sorts of threats to the life and health of city people.

People die on Russian roads more than from any terrible illness. According to the official statistics of the motor licensing and inspection department, in 2006 32,724 people died in Russia in road accidents. A fifth of road accident were because of the infringement of traffic rules by pedestrians, from which more than 7,000 people died.

Second place in this rather sad rating are fire and threats of a criminal character: crimes against the life and health of citizens, the theft of personal property, illegal actions of hooligan, nationalist or racist motives.

A little less but also a risk to the life of every person is the mass congestion of people, such as on the underground, on public transport, at stations and airports, at concert halls, stadiums, etc. For example, in November 2007 more than 100 people were evacuated from the Krylatskoye Moscow Ice Rink because of a sagging roof caused by a deformation in one of the details of its construction.

To known risks since ancient times – the collapse of stadiums, stampedes, aggression and so forth – in the last 10-20 years the threat of terrorism has been added. Every year there are also other new risks, the statistics for which have not yet been conducted: it is a downside of the new achievements of electronics and technology, which fill the lives of city people.

Recently the whole Russian-speaking Internet has discussed the problem of "self-switch" children's toys, the electronics in which randomly come on at any time. Toys are not the worst to a greater degree, but what if other electronic systems "will go mad"? There is a risk, and it is considerable.

The risks listed above, apply practically to all megacities of the world, and each country by virtue of the possibilities and understanding are compelled to solve them both on state and on city levels daily.

When discussing new projects of safety on city scales it is more often related to video observation systems or video monitoring as on their base, the construction of prospective and effective safety complexes is possible. In the opinion of Leonid Ogaryov, president of Caesar-satellite, “in the future all security will be reduced to video observation."

Evgeny Malikov, director of the department of sales and advertising at ISS, which is engaged in the development of intelligent safety systems, adds that in the last 2-3 years in connection with the development of IP-technologies in Russia a new principle of introducing video observation systems on a city scale have been realized. The second innovation is that such systems have a set of intellectual modules used to automate the processing of video footage.

Besides video observation systems and emergency communication terminals (SOS buttons on transport, in houses, on streets), monitoring systems and access management systems (in apartments – door phones, in offices – passes, etc, are also necessary for a modern city.

You are on camera!

The death of people on roads causes serious concern all over the world. The main reason for tragedies is non-observance of rules by both drivers and pedestrians. There are 2 stages to a solution, as usual: first to train city people in safety rules, and then to make sure that all of them are observed. But rules are well observed only in one case - if punishment follows each infringement. Safety experts are ready to offer a set of solutions - from the installation of video cameras and special equipment in each car to the organization of high-grade video observation on roads.

This is what happens in London where entrance to the city centre is completely supervised. Cameras automatically read out the registration numbers of cars and verify them with a police database. Moreover, there is a congestion charge for private motor transport so the system forms a ticket for entering the center and sends it on to the address of the owner of the car. A ticket for infringement of rules, which can be challenged in a court, is also sent by post.

A similar system operates in Stockholm where already at the beginning of the 1990s there was no street that had not been equipped with video cameras, and total supervision over all motor transport was conducted. Of course, these systems are not cheap: according to indirect sources, just the maintenance of the system in London costs tax payers more than 6 million pounds sterling a year.

However, Malikov adds, in the last three years the development and more frequent introduction of IP-video observation that saves serious funds can be noted. The development of software, the presence of infrastructure and now the economic availability of the necessary equipment allow for the introduction of systems that are capable to code an analog signal from a video camera on site, and then send a digitalized signal for which it is possible to use literally any fiber-optical network. Previously, to develop a system with a set of video cameras, it was necessary to spend more than half of a budget (60 per cent, according to Malikov) for laying separate cable to transfer analog signal from a video camera to a computer.

One more indicative trend of the last decade is that video cameras are actively used not only for capturing road infringements. Electronic eyes watch citizens on streets, squares and places of rest and leisure.

City video observation systems have received especially active development after known events on September 11th in the US. Governments generously allocate funds to introduce similar systems helping not only in the counteraction of terrorism, offences and spread of drug use, but also simplifying the control over quite respectable citizens.

The unconditional world leader by number of video cameras is the UK. According to lieutenant colonel Evgeny Gildeyev from the management of information and public relations department of the Municipal Department of Internal Affairs of Moscow, "There are 4.2 million video cameras established in England, and criminal offences in places of installation were reduced by 30 per cent." A simple calculation shows that one video camera is on every 14 inhabitants in the UK, and this is an absolute world record. The majority of video cameras are, of course, in London. Incidentally in light of the recent terrorism attack attempts in London videos from cameras have played a main role in detaining the terrorists.

In 2nd place is Sweden and Germany where the installation of cameras at the end of the 1990s has helped to half offences in one year. The example of Dubai, which rather carefully and without greed approaches the safety of the population, is indicative in this sense. On the Palma artificial island there will be a set of tunnels for cars and all of them will be equipped with video cameras, and video of infringements will be a base for penalties. Malikov talks about the experience of his company in creating a video observation system in a city in Spain where by means of video cameras located near traffic lights, local authorities fought against cars going on a red light and it was quite successful.

How to approach

In Russia in 2003-2004 the federal target program "Safe City" was supposed to be accepted, however it has not been approved officially. There is only a commission of the president of the Russian Federation from September 26, 2005, PR-1564, “On the creation of a state system for the prevention of offences of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia.” Within the limits of this document regions and cities, uniting efforts with developers of systems of safety, will start to introduce local safety programs. At a municipal level operating experience of various systems is actively being stored.

Moscow at the moment lags behind European capitals in terms of video camera equipment. However the main problem is that each department, establishing video cameras on the streets of the city, try to solve their local problems, without taking into account the safety system of the city as a whole.

The following are safety systems that have already or in the future, will be operating on the streets of Moscow. For rather a long time there has been a video surveillance system on the metro: at all stations, on the approaches to them, at escalators and subways video cameras have been installed, the data from which goes to the transport police and technical services.

All apartment entrances were equipped with door phones and code locks right after the terrorism acts in 1998-1999. Back then a program on increasing safety in Moscow was accepted. All the schools in Moscow in 2005 were equipped with panic buttons, and the installation of metal detectors and video observation systems were actively discussed, however they have not been installed on a mass scale due to their cost.

Moreover, in Moscow, an automated control system of traffic on the majority of major highways is already functioning – video cameras show traffic police officers a live picture from any highway. Also in the capital there is a "Safe Courtyard" system, which observes both the work of yard keepers, and other activities in the courtyard.

As for future plans, in spring of this year the Moscow governmental order "On the strategy of development of the city for the period up to 2025" was approved. About this Mayor Yuri Luzhkov stated: "Probably, in the long term we should limit the entrance of cars to the central part of the city. One way may be the introduction of a payment to enter the Third ring." A previous plan for a congestion charge was rejected due to a contradiction in federal legislation.

But the majority of experts asked say that the uniform system of video observation in the city has not started and modern technologies on the basis of IP have not been applied. A uniform service has also been discussed for many years for the Moscow region, but little has been done. This project is very large scale, and moreover - plans to use the advanced technologies of IP-video observation and intellectual recognition. For example, says Malikov, in Mytischi in 2008 a global IP-video system of 350 video cameras will be launched, information from which will be processed by means of an intellectual system developed by ISS. Video cameras will be established on roads and points of enhanced attention, which will be singled out by the administration of the city, and the signal will be sent to a situational center.

"The program can distinguish registration plate numbers of cars, verify them with a police database, and the system will react, if the car is stolen," says Malikov. The system can similarly distinguish fires and criminal situations, and the operator will transfer the information onto the corresponding service.

But as there is no nationwide concept of the construction of the Safe City system, heads of cities do not always understand the scale of the problems and how to solve them.

As a head of a town in the Moscow region, having allocated half the funds, after a conversation with a system engineer said: "If only a year ago I knew how to approach it…"

The problem is that a video footage is not considered as an evidential base for both police bodies and the judicial system. Infringements and crimes caught on camera also have to be proven in other ways.

What do we need people for

People are interested in who has access to video archives. But very few people wonder how video footage becomes structured information, which can be used for practical purposes. Already now the whole process is automated, the intelligent system of processing the information is able to read numbers, to find left belongings, to distinguish the faces of people an operator chooses. Ideally a system operator will only be involved when, after having comprehensively analyzed the picture, the system will submit a signal that human intervention is required. However due to the illiteracy of customers such systems are limited only to video footage and supervision by the operator of the image from many cameras. This handicraft method is used everywhere in Moscow in the "Safe courtyard" program, and Luzhkov compared the pressure of operators who continuously trace fifty cameras to a pilot.

The question is, why use a full-time team of operators if a clever electronic system can perfectly manage it? And most importantly, Russian firms, on the basis of the equipment of eminent manufacturers and their unknown Chinese colleagues, are creating modern security complexes capable of successfully competing on the world market. The quality and efficiency of modern video-monitoring systems to a greater degree depend on the concept of construction of the system and the algorithms of the program processing the information, so developers now improve these algorithms of processing images, recognition of subjects and people and fingerprints, car plate numbers.

Safety as a risk

As usual, the video observation system, which brings considerable advantages and saves human resources, also bears risks. Besides the technical and legislative problems there are ethical and social questions: is society ready to renounce a life of privacy for the sake of its own safety? Surprisingly, according to surveys carried out in different countries, society is split practically in half. When in 2000 in Japan a bill by which wiretaps would become possible in affairs about drugs, guns traffic and organized murders was proposed, 44 per cent of Japanese supported the bill and 45 per cent voted against it.

In Russia, according to Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 40 per cent of citizens put the interests of the state above private life. And almost as many citizens in America - 42 per cent- consider that the state does not need to receive judicial warrants for internal espionage.

Who would want to go to the shops and be watched not only by an operator, but the general public? And nobody is protected from such a possibility. For example, in London a TV channel is in test mode where viewers were offered "to fight crime from home". The channel broadcasts the image of 40 cameras located in the city and if a spectator will notice an offence it can call the police and inform them. But, obviously, during the broadcast the usual private life of the city people will be available to the general public. Previously and even now on the Internet on a regular basis fragments of recordings of various security services, funny or terrible, appear.

It is obvious that with an increase in the number of cameras in a city the risk of use of any video information for mercenary purposes increases, and simply the risk of incorrect recognition of a picture. For example, a young inhabitant of Britain passing a video camera in the city centre showed it the middle finger, for just an instant taking his/her hand off the steering wheel, and soon received by post an impressive fine for creating a potentially emergency situation on the road.

Benjamin Franklin's well-known statement when nobody knew about global video observation systems comes to mind: "People, who for the sake of safety are ready to sacrifice their freedom, are not worth neither safety, nor freedom".

In the majority of countries (and Russia is not an exception) the law in no way regulates the circulation of information received by means of technical methods. This causes certain anxiety in government officials in different countries. The representative for private data of the government of Germany, Peter Shaar, has previously spoken against the plans of the German Ministry of Internal Affairs to control the computers of citizens through the Internet, and recently stated the inadmissibility of uniting the databases of video observation with governmental bases on citizens of Germany which could lead to total control over everyone. And this could be realized by software - for example, at American Carnegie Mellon University a method has been developed, allowing to hide the faces of people on video recordings and to restore them if necessary by police.

But while the States are not worried about the protection of information, citizens try to protect themselves. In London there is a delivery service of containers with dirt for motorists, which motorists use to cover their registration plate numbers before entering the city centre. Some say that the company belongs to Russians.

However, Malikov notes that the application of modern equipment, in particular infra-red searchlights etc, allows to distinguish plate numbers even covered in dirt. On the Internet there are also metal protective covers for biometric electronic passports on sale. And though manufacturers of the equipment and the state organization assure that the reading of information from such passports is possible only from a distance of 10 cm, hackers for a long time have already been making devices which allow to receive this information on a distance from over 10 m. And citizens, naturally, want to exclude the risk of theft of data and cloning of documents – virtual theft is too expensive.

In effect, one of the main historical tasks of the government is to ensure the safety of citizens. However, when a technical progress allows for the total supervision of the life of the country, it is difficult to find a balance between the observance of the rights of citizens and the maintenance of their safety. Russia is only at the beginning of this road, and due to the features of the national mentality it is a good job that the budget for technical resources to control cities is absolutely insignificant.