Embrace ICT in structures, govts told

Happiness Zengeni in Cape Town
Good data management can help governments across Africa to provide trends, forecasts and facilitate rapid urbanisation. This can, however, be made possible if the same governments fully embrace ICT in their structures.

Industry experts at the ongoing Huawei Safe City Africa Summit in Cape Town all emphasised the need to reinforce city safety and in the process reduce crimes through establishing innovative ICT safe city solutions.

Forrester Research Principal Analyst Jennifer Belissent said the first step that is required is for governments to be aware of what is going on in the various cities.

“This can be done through the installation of cameras, sensors, networks, metres and GPS as they help in gathering the data,” she said.

Once the data is gathered it can then be analysed and action taken.

Ms Belissent said simple things such as car number plates can help in preventing crimes or “to find stolen cars.

This can be integrated with other data services and enable them to track unlicenced drivers, or cars without insurance.”

In Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, Zinara and CVR recently integrated its systems to allow the tracking of vehicles that have irregular registrations or failed to pay customs duty upon importation.

The system has already successfully flashed out vehicles that were not on the national vehicle registration database, those that have been imported but not yet registered and those with expired licence discs.

Ms Belissent said urbanisation means that a growing population depends on cities to meet their social, environmental and economic needs.

Safety is fundamental to those needs, and public safety is a concern of city leaders — whether it’s preventing crime, reducing infant mortality or mitigating the effects of natural disasters.

Better access to data and new analytic tools makes that job easier. A safe city not only improves live-ability, but also encourages economic growth and ensures sustainable development. And, that makes safety a key element of any smart city. ”

Huawei Technologies South Africa director Wireless Solutions director Rose Moyo however, said technology does not replace the process but (in terms of unusual events) it allows monitoring before, during and after the incident.

She said CCTV cameras help in monitoring an area before something like an accident happens while rapid response will be given during the incident. “The case can therefore be easily solved using the data that would have been collected.

The acceleration of global urbanisation and the proliferation of the internet will drive the convergence of ICT and urban infrastructure.

Countries worldwide are actively formulating plans for the development of safe and smart cities to seize new opportunities generated by global urbanisation.

At the Summit, safe city project leaders from many countries including Madagascar, Kenya, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Kingdom shared their experience on ICT best practices to enhance public safety with innovative ICT.

Mr Randimbisoa Blaise Richard, Minister of Public Safety of Madagascar, said: “As a multicultural country, Madagascar has gone to great efforts to meet the increasing requirements of economic growth and social stability triggered by the acceleration of globalisation.

Our major responsibilities are to maintain social order and combat crime, working to ensure that Madagascar is a safe country to live, travel, and invest in.

To this end, we chose to co-operate with Huawei and adopt its safe city solution to protect both the lives and property of our residents, leveraging Huawei’s cutting-edge technology and consummate service in 2013.”

Mr Richard Chace, chairman of the Global Security Industry Alliance (GSIA), shared his insights from the perspective of global safe city standards and trends.

He said: “I’m very focused on how urbanisation trends around the world are driving the specification and implementation of safe city technologies and solutions.

“I feel very strongly that successful safe city programmes build heavily on well developed public-private partnerships that are designed to be “win-win”.

“The best use of technology is the one driven by sound planning that first seeks to define problems and then match the right manageable solutions for the long term.”

With a focus on ICT infrastructure, Huawei innovates with its partners and customers to provide a one-stop safe city solution.

Huawei also provides services to government customers though channel partners including Telkom, MIS (PTY), REUTECH, IRT, and Mustek.

Justin Schmidt, executive manager of Hexagon Ventures, discussed how Huawei and Hexagon have developed the industry’s first joint safe city solution which fully meets business needs for city safety management.

He said: “For the first time, the majority of the world’s population lives in cities and this is putting pressure on cities to provide a safe environment for their citizens.

“Hexagon and Huawei are meeting this global challenge head-on with integrated safe city solution that enables cities to determine threats, resolve crises more easily through collaborative efforts and resolve issues with intelligent analysis of big data.”

Huawei’s Safe City Solution is the first of its kind in the industry to enable complete visualisation of incident handling processes and comprehensive convergence of commands.