India: “Geospatial technology has to be at the base of Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS), and a major tool in counter terrorism operations,” said Sanjay Sahay, AGDP, Police Computer Wing & Nodal Officer, CCTNS, Karnataka, while making his presentation on the theme: Internal Security and Police Modernisation at the last day of Geointelligence India 2014. He said that the country needs to establish a city-based video surveillance system, which can be integrated to a national level network, to form a grid or network of intelligence networks. He also pointed out that the biggest hurdle in achieving this is not technology but the mindset of those who implement and have to use it.
Echoing the view, Brig Sanjay Agarwal, Security Adviser (Naxal Management), Ministry of Home Affairs, said that it is the capability that matters, intent can change with leaders. He outlined several challenges in countering the Naxal movement in India and also offered a few suggestions for the homeland security industry. “We want solutions and not products, which would enable us to analyse, extrapolate it to a paradigm, and then use it in decision making process. I am sanguine that we can create economic solutions to such needs which can give the end.”
While the speakers elaborated on various programmes and initiatives taken by the government, they also equivocally expressed the need for focussed and integrated inter-ministerial response.
Major PoonamSawaantKar (Retd), Group Manager – Homeland Security, Defence and Security Division, Rolta India, while deliberating on the CCTNS said that the existing crime monitoring systems are either outdated or are not designed to inter-connect with other e-governance systems. This, she said, limits the opportunity to provide an information rich framework for data dissemination and retrieval to various policy and decision making bodies and regular public. She said that CCTNS aims at creating a comprehensive and integrated system for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of policing at all levels, especially at police station level. CCTNS will operate through the creation of a nationwide networked infrastructure for evolution of IT-enabled tracking system around investigation of crime and detection of criminals.
Explaining how the HEART programme (helpline number: 1901) was implemented in Gujarat, Manoj Agarwal, Joint Commissioner of Police, Gujarat, highlighted the use of GIS for ensuring security to women and children. He said that there is a need to reach out to the distressed as fast as possible by leveraging location based information.
Discussing the bottlenecks in enabling a strong network of location based technologies and a single emergency response number, Prakash Narayan, Technical Services Manager, Hexagon India, said that infrastructure such as GPS locators etc have to be installed on every tower, an economic solution has to be found to find out how to enable emergency calling from inactive suspended SIM cards, and subscriber databases and their current address and location need to be maintained. “We need good map data. We need to collect geo-referenced data on roads without name and address information, improve coordination between first responders (police/ fire/ ambulance), find solution that facilitates call-transfer between jurisdiction in two different states, and mandate providers to share existing location data,” he said.
Remote Sensing and Image Analysis
“There is need to reduce the time cycle period between each phase of operation right from observation to action,” said Lt Col S Mohan, Indian Army, during the session on remote sensing and image analysis. He stressed that India needs to exploit remote sensing data more aggressively and intuitively for protecting the national security, and that digital elevation models, multi-spectral and hyperspectral imagery and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) have opened up new avenues in the field of defence applications. He also underlined the importance of GIS applications, calling them indispensible for planning and decision making at tactical and strategic levels of warfare.
Murali Mohan, Managing Director, Mobiterra Solutions, India, kicked off his presentation by stating that image analysts are having an exciting time with sub-metre imagery, hardware tools such as UAV, sensors, cameras, and plethora of software. Juxtaposing the current situation with the challenges faced by the image analysis in the past, he noted, “In the past, image analysts were forced to accept solutions which were made with a ‘fits all’ mentality. Today, Just In Time image processing is done using workflow based systems which are tailored according to each user and are task-specific.”
TS Rawat, Scientist- E, Defence Terrain Research Laboratory, discussed the use of thermal band images and sub-surface imaging to bolster and aid terrain intelligence. He discussed how remote sensing in thermal band for terrain intelligence holds the potential to detect changes due to heat disturbances or heat re-distribution on account of activity on the ground. “The temperature of an object which is above absolute zero leads to emission of thermal radiation which can be detected and quantitative temperature can be measured using a thermal sensor. This temperature distribution is measured and mapped during day and night time using aerial thermal imaging and temperature data loggers on the ground to develop algorithms for development of signature library for targets of interests,” he explained. However, he added a caveat that the accuracy of the conversion depends on the wavelength of operation object surface geometry, emissivity of the object and environmental parameters.
Source: Our Correspondent
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