Phuket Police Chief Calls For Integrated, Island-Wide Cctv

[Lite Beer]

Phuket Police chief calls for integrated, island-wide CCTV

Phuket Gazette –

Maj Gen Chonasit did not elaborate on whether his plan to connect all CCTV in Phuket to a single server included use of the Phuket Provincial Administration Organization CCTV control room in Rassada (pictured). Photo: Phuket OrBorJor

Phuket Provincial Police Commander Chonasit Wattanavrangkul reveals his plan to have all CCTV cameras in Phuket – both government and private – feed into a single server. Photo: Chutharat Plerin

PHUKET: Phuket Provincial Police Commander Chonasit Wattanavrangkul this morning revealed plans to ask the central government to fund a project that will see all CCTV cameras across Phuket feed live footage into a single server.

Speaking at the monthly 'Governor Meets the Press' meeting at Provincial Hall, Maj Gen Chonasit said that CCTV footage had provided essential information in solving recent criminal cases, such as the stabbing of Australian tourist Michelle Smith.

“We are now working on a CCTV project to improve public safety in Phuket by having all CCTV on the island connected to the same server. Once done, we will present it to the Phuket provincial government,” he said.

Maj Gen Chonasit explained that CCTV could alleviate the decade-old problem of not enough police officers being assigned to Phuket.

“We will set more checkpoints and assign officers from the Phuket Provincial Police to join local police efforts, but the number of police officers in Phuket is based on its registered population.

“Phuket has only three [administrative] districts and the number of residents registered as living here does not match the actual number of people living here. That is why we need more officers,” he explained.

Maj Gen Chonasit went on to point out that he did not expect the CCTV project to cost much.

“We will not ask [the central government] for a big budget for this project because we will use the thousands of CCTV cameras that have already been installed in Phuket, by both government offices and private businesses,” he said.

One problem that will need addressing is the high number of defunct CCTV cameras that need repair.

“We have found that many CCTV cameras are not working. We will encourage the persons in charge to inspect and fix their cameras so we can connect them all to a server so everyone can view the footage and be part of an integrated public safety campaign,” Maj Gen Chonasit said.

Phuket Governor Tri Augkaradacha asked for the plan to be developed quickly so it could be presented to deputy national police chief Gen Pansiri Prapawat when he visits Phuket this Wednesday (July 4).

In revealing his plan, Maj Gen Chonasit did not elaborate on whether or not the project included making use of the Phuket Provincial Administration Organization (OrBorJor) CCTV control room at the OrBorJor hospital in Rassada.

He also did not make any reference to the call by OrBorJor President Paiboon Upatising just last month for the central government to provide 2 billion baht to interconnect 10,000 CCTV cameras in Phuket.

Source: http://www.phuketgazette.net/archives/articles/2012/article16323.html

-- Phuket Gazette 2012-07-02

[george]

This will need a lot of bandwidth... Is the infrastructure really ready for this?

[bangkokdavie]

A single server, what no back up !!.............again !!

[LivinginKata]

This will need a lot of bandwidth... Is the infrastructure really ready for this?

You really think that Commander Chonasit Wattanavrangkul has any idea about bandwidth - talk is cheap & easy.

[madmitch]

This would involve co-operation between the various police districts. And what do they mean by private cameras?

[Guest]

This will need a lot of bandwidth... Is the infrastructure really ready for this?

The CCTV images are likely few KB each, with 5 images/second frame rate. (I have absolute no idea how the images / feed is currently stored nor transfered, so the following could be plain wrong).

Let's say images are 10KB and those are taken 5 frames/second. 1 camera would produce 50KB/second feed.

20 cameras = 1 MB/second. If there is 2.000 cameras on the island. This would be 100MB/second or 800Mbps feed.

Network wise that should be doable as the island is covered with multiple fiber optic cables.

Storing the data could be an interesting issue. 100MB/second = 360GB/hour = 9TB/day = 63GB/week. Well, doable.

Is there estimates how many cameras there are on the island?

[Jimi007]

Police patrolling might help prevent crime. Police sitting and watching CCTV may help catch someone after the crime has already been committed. I would rather have crime prevention instead of more victims caught on camera....

[sandmike]

As well as the bandwidth and storage issues, no-one can sit and watch a video wall for very long without becoming numbed and missing obvious incidents. Video analytics can help, but I suspect that where there is simply general surveillance that will be of no use. Giving the operators a virtual patrol to carry out will help, but most of the video recorded will be unobserved, and only of any use in a forensic investigation, as happened in the recent tragedy. If everybody's on the ball and well trained, with good software to assist then say, following a vehicle, is doable, but TIT, and I suspect it will all be for show only.

[Guest]

Police patrolling might help prevent crime. Police sitting and watching CCTV may help catch someone after the crime has already been committed. I would rather have crime prevention instead of more victims caught on camera....

I see this as two bladed sword.

One part is the prevention of the crimes by telling 'we can solve the crimes afterwards, do not even try'. This is the same reason why most countries have their armies. Not to fight wars, but to tell other it's going to cost them way more to try than not to try. When this message is out in the streets, who wishes to do an crime when they can be caught? Reward might not be higher than the punishment.

Then again, this does not apply to all the drugheads out there, who need to make their money to get their dosage.

The other is controlling the information. Who ever is on top of the information feed, have a lot of power. Concentrating all the information feeds to one place will take the power out from the local centers.. and put the power under few. Works well, if one can be sure that these few are the really good guys. Not so well if those can be bought with few hundred thousands of baths in the case of an 'emergency' as in these cases the information, or lack of it, can be worth of millions.

[Guest]

As well as the bandwidth and storage issues, no-one can sit and watch a video wall for very long without becoming numbed and missing obvious incidents. Video analytics can help, but I suspect that where there is simply general surveillance that will be of no use. Giving the operators a virtual patrol to carry out will help, but most of the video recorded will be unobserved, and only of any use in a forensic investigation, as happened in the recent tragedy. If everybody's on the ball and well trained, with good software to assist then say, following a vehicle, is doable, but TIT, and I suspect it will all be for show only.

I would think it's not the active watching and reacting to the crimes, but more of the solving crimes. When crime happens, then the feeds from the area can be looked afterwards, which will help to find the criminals.

This also works as an preventative measure to tell the criminals that it's not worth of the try - go somewhere else.

[Sateev]

Aside from the disadvantages of fewer police patrols being 'necessary', and catching criminals after the fact, I'm sure the contract to do this 'upgrade' will be fairly and transparently administered, right?

[Arkady]

“Phuket has only three [administrative] districts and the number of residents registered as living here does not match the actual number of people living here. That is why we need more officers,” he explained.

Ridiculous statement. Most of the Thais living in Phuket come from somewhere else and are there to work for a few months to a few years but intend to move back home eventually. So they don't go to the trouble of re-registering themselves in Phuket which is difficult to do for most workers because they don't own their own property in Phuket and have to get on someone's tabian baan to register there.

The police seem to have less sense than the tourist beating tuk tuk drivers they say are uneducated. It's pretty obvious that increasing the quantity of doltish, corrupt police officers is not going to help much. It would be better to send all the existing ones to the glue factory and replace them with better quality human beings.

Edited July 3, 2012 by Arkady

[Payboy]

This will need a lot of bandwidth... Is the infrastructure really ready for this?

Sure, just tap in to the excess capacity of the tsunami warning system.

[LaurentPerche]

Perfect timing. Who can argue for less security?

lets spend a few billions bath on a new CCTV system using a fully transparent bidding process.

DDSS.