UP Police will use artificial intelligence for better surveillance and crowd management during Kumbh Mela, which scheduled to be held from 5 January to 4 March.
Scores of people from across the world throng at Ujjain in Prayagraj district (formerly known as Allahabad), leaving the police with the massive responsibility of maintaining law and order.
By leveraging AI, security personnel working with Integrated Command and Control Centre will be able to see visuals thereby track the crowd movement, assess crowd size and look out for any suspicious activities.
“This will be for the first time that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be used in Kumbh Mela. Over 1,000 CCTV cameras will be used to monitor various movements across the Mela area spread across 3,200 hectares,” UP Additional Chief Secretary Awanish Awasthi told a newswire. The police will be using the technology to manage traffic by ensuring coordination between multiple traffic channels by integrating it with Google Maps.
In a similar use case, Railway Ministry had announced last year about the department using AI and ML for crowd control. By deploying IBM Intelligent Video Analytics, the Ministry monitored the crowd at stations and its adjoining areas during the Ardh Kumbh Mela, where 800 special trains were arranged for pilgrims going to Prayagraj.
Though AI is being leveraged for the first time for Kumbh Mela, Prayagraj Police earlier used AI for a similar purpose. While speaking at an AI conclave last year, Ramit Sharma, Inspector General Police Allahabad Range, described how UP Police’s Police Emergency Management System (PEMS) periodically generates an analytical intelligence report to track its fleet of 3,200 cars in 75 districts of Uttar Pradesh. According to him, advanced analytics such as Four Frame Analysis, Hotspot Analysis, Trend Analysis of criminal events were used to generate the report.
