Under a Rs 1.21-crore project sanctioned by the state government, the Mumbai Police will install more than 120 “intelligent” CCTV cameras that can “recognise and flag” suspicious movements automatically.

As part of the project, 21 such digital CCTV cameras have been installed at the Mumbai Police headquarters at Crawford Market. Besides, these cameras are also being installed at the High Court, Mantralaya and three other sensitive spots in the city.

“The project was sanctioned about a year ago and we have just completed installation of the CCTV cameras at the police headquarters. Cameras are being put up at the other five spots, though they are not yet operational. This is part of the police modernisation scheme,” said Joint Commissioner of Police (Administration) Hemant Karkare.

The city police are currently testing the special software provided by IOmniscient, a company dealing in intelligent surveillance equipment. Besides the Pohang and Ulsan customs agency in Korea, the Canberra Airport has been using the company’s surveillance software since February 2003. A litmus test of the software’s capabilities will be carried out soon at Churchgate railway station.

“It becomes difficult to monitor CCTV cameras constantly and maintain high levels of concentration. It is natural for a police officer’s attention levels to drop after 15 to 20 minutes of staring at an LCD screen. The new software will have intelligent algorithms to identify anything untoward on its own, and flag it as an alert,” said Karkare.

This is how the software works: the police will have the option of feeding in 31 pre-defined suspicious movement patterns, which will be spotted by the software during actual operation. If once such movement is picked up by a camera, the software instantly flags it. It then follows the subject’s movements and location.

“If someone lingers on at a particular spot for an abnormal length of time, or if someone’s walking or running speeds are very different from other persons in the area, or if an object is left unattended for a long time, the software will immediately pick up these things automatically. There are a total of 31 movements which we can choose to flag,” said Karkare.