Huawei Launches New Safe City Solution

Francis Gachina Gatuthu, iC3 Director, National Police Service, Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, Kenya

Huawei, a leading global ICT solutions provider, officially unveiled its Integrated Communication Platform (ICP) today at HUAWEI CONNECT 2016 in Shanghai. The platform is a new addition to Huawei’s range of Safe City solutions featuring extensive connectivity and high visibility. The platform can pick up alerts from various channels via social media, Internet of Things and etc, and can also quickly and extensively access videos. It enables fast response and handling of security alerts, streamlined coordination of different first responder departments, and granular, informed command decisions.

The ICP was announced at the August 31 Global Safe City Summit, which was part of HUAWEI CONNECT 2016, held in Shanghai. With its theme of “Leading New ICT, Making Cities Safer”, the Global Safe City Summit attracted over 1,500 attendees from government departments, standards organizations, consultancy firms, and Huawei’s industry partners. The summit featured discussions on the use of innovative technologies such as cloud computing, Internet of Things, mobile broadband, and video. Participants said the security industry must become smarter and cloud-based to develop proactive, integrated, fully visualized safe city systems.

The Kenya Government is a trailblazer in the security industry, and has extensive experience implementing safe city solutions. Francis Gachina Gatuthu, iC3 Director, National Police Service, Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, Kenya, said that the Kenya government made a significant commitment to improving public order over the past few years. The command center’s eLTE system gives it access to CCTV coverage of major events and urban districts, so that it can respond to incidents with speed and precision. The Kenya Government is modernizing communications in the National Police Service as per the vision 2030 on security sector. Figures supplied by Kenya Police Dept’s 2015 annual report show that since the introduction of the new system, the crime rate in Kenya has dropped significantly. Tourism has also picked up considerably, with hotel room occupancy in January and February this year up 18% over 2015.

Staff writer