In collaboration with its business partners Firetide and Genetec, IBM has deployed the infrastructure build-out for Operation Virtual Shield with plans to expand the network throughout the city. In the first phase, IBM helped the city experts and network engineers to design and implement a surveillance strategy infrastructure to capture, monitor and fully index video for real-time and forensic-related safety applications. This entailed building a unified fiber network throughout the downtown Chicago area, deploying a critical wireless infrastructure to offer flexibility as required, installing new surveillance cameras, linking preexisting cameras to the network, and creating a fully redundant backend system to monitor the video, store the images and allow for business continuity and disaster recovery applications.
The Chicago office of emergency management and communications (OEMC) and IBM are now teaming to expand the surveillance system and to add analytics that provide license plate recognition, trending projections and intelligent search capabilities to the existing infrastructure. Chicago’s security solution is designed to provide several benefits to both city officials and citizens including: real-time video surveillance intelligence for proactive homeland security monitoring; faster response time to emergencies; more effective deployment of emergency responders; and increased travel efficiency through traffic congestion tracking.
Tony Ruiz, executive director of Chicago’s OEMC, said: Mayor Richard Daley has had, for many years, a grand plan to incorporate cameras from public entities and private sector businesses into a single unified system allowing first responders access to real time visual data. IBM is helping enable the City of Chicago’s vision for intelligent security.
