Gwangju City CCTV Integrated Control Center Plays a Key Role as a Guardian

89 Controllers Monitor 6,593 Vehicles 24/7 Year-Round

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] The Gwangju Metropolitan City CCTV Integrated Control Center is playing a crucial role as a sentinel.

According to Gwangju Metropolitan City on the 26th, the Gwangju CCTV Integrated Control Center, which opened in 2013 as the first of its kind nationwide at the metropolitan level, monitors a total of 6,593 CCTVs installed within the jurisdiction for purposes such as crime prevention, child protection, and vehicle license plate recognition. The monitoring is conducted by 89 operators working in shifts 24 hours a day, year-round without interruption.

In particular, since February when COVID-19 began to spread, the center has proactively supported video analysis to enable rapid epidemiological investigations by health authorities.

The Integrated Control Center dispatched 31 operators 16 times to locations requiring CCTV video analysis, such as parks, hospitals, and apartments visited by confirmed patients, to quickly identify close contacts and support tracking of their movement paths.

Due to this proactive video analysis support by the Integrated Control Center, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency evaluated the center as excellent in efforts to prevent contact spread, CCTV video analysis capabilities, and proactiveness.

The center not only plays an active role in disaster situations like COVID-19 but also significantly contributes to preventing incidents and accidents to protect citizens’ safety in daily life.

On the 10th, a report was received about a missing elderly person with dementia in a neighborhood park in Buk-gu. By focusing monitoring around the last known location, the center found the elderly person on the street lined with trees near Ilgok Intersection after about 1 hour and 20 minutes and safely handed them over to their family.

It is also a great help in crime prevention and apprehension of suspects.

At around 3:30 a.m. on the 26th of last month, an operator monitoring the system discovered three youths showing suspicious behavior, such as breaking into a parked vehicle and watching the surroundings, in front of a middle school in Seo-gu. The operator immediately reported to the police and provided real-time movement routes using nearby CCTVs, which was crucial in enabling the police to apprehend the suspects within 15 minutes of the report.

Since its opening, the Integrated Control Center has conducted 3,696 various incident and accident prevention activities and helped apprehend suspects in 630 cases.

Gwangju City is further expanding its urban safety infrastructure for citizen safety.

Since August 2018, the Integrated Control Center has been reorganized into a ‘Smart City Safety Network Service’ system.

The citizen safety service includes ▲112 emergency dispatch ▲112 video support ▲119 emergency dispatch support ▲disaster safety situation response support ▲support for socially vulnerable groups ▲rapid apprehension support for electronic anklet violators, sharing video information in real time with related agencies such as the 112 center, 119 situation room, disaster situation room, and Ministry of Justice location tracking center, securing golden time through sectoral linkage in crime prevention, disaster, fire, and social vulnerability fields.

Additionally, from last year through 2022, the city is expanding 2,050 CCTVs and 930 emergency bells.

Installation of CCTVs in child protection zones was completed 100% last year, and installation in urban parks is planned to be 100% completed by the end of this year.

Jung Min-gon, Director of the City Citizen Safety Office, said, “The CCTV Integrated Control Center is doing its best in cooperation with related agencies to realize a safe city of Gwangju,” and added, “We will take the lead in protecting citizens’ safety and property and making Gwangju even safer.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.