The Gauteng Provincial Government has been tapping into a vast CCTV camera network to fight the high levels of crime in the province. In this interview with BizNews, Michael Varney, the Chief Commercial Officer of Vumacam, details the size of the network which has spread throughout Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, Tshwane, Mogale – and now even into the Western Cape where it has planted its first network in conjunction with the Saldanha Bay Municipality. He details the “multitude of successes” achieved with the public-private partnership in Gauteng where it has been able to reduce response times from 18 to 30 minutes down to five to 10 minutes. As for the technology, apart from number plate recognition cameras, there are also overview cameras that pick up suspicious behaviour as well as smoke in a city notorious for building fires. “…the minute smoke is picked up, we’re able then to create an alert and dispatch appropriately, leading to enormous successes in the prevention of the loss of life.”
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Highlights from the interview
In this interview, Michael Varney, Chief Commercial Officer of Vumacam, discusses the expansion and success of the company’s CCTV camera network in partnership with the Gauteng Provincial Government to combat crime. Vumacam has built a network of 7,000 cameras across Gauteng, including license plate recognition (LPR) and overview cameras with AI analytics. These cameras help detect suspicious behaviours and assist public safety agencies in real-time responses. The network spans Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, Tshwane, and Mogale, with new expansions in the Western Cape, as well as future plans to expand nationally.
Varney highlights the collaboration’s tangible successes, such as significantly reducing response times from 18-30 minutes to 5-10 minutes by improving dispatch accuracy for public sector vehicles like police and emergency services. Additionally, Vumacam helps address non-criminal issues, such as illegal dumping and has been instrumental in identifying and prosecuting offenders. The system has also improved emergency response to fires in hijacked buildings by detecting smoke via AI-powered overview cameras.
When asked about facial recognition, Varney notes that while the technology exists, South African legislation has yet to fully accommodate its use. Vumacam is awaiting regulatory updates before implementing this capability. He also discusses plans to extend coverage into townships and informal settlements, emphasizing the logistical challenges of ensuring connectivity in these areas.
Lastly, Varney mentions Vumacam’s intention to collaborate with other provincial governments, focusing on integrating existing infrastructure with their network and ensuring the cameras’ maintenance and uptime.
Edited transcript of the interview
Chris Steyn (00:01.789)
The Gauteng Provincial Government has been tapping into a vast CCTV camera network to fight the high levels of crime in the province. We find out more from Michael Varney, the Chief Commercial Officer of Vumacam. Welcome Michael.
Michael Varney (00:19.49)
Thank you very much, Chris. Nice to be with you.
Chris Steyn (00:24.081)
How big is your network currently?
Michael Varney (00:28.696)
So Vumacam has densified a network. Originally, we started in Gauteng and we densified throughout the City of Johannesburg. We’ve expanded into the City of Ekurhuleni, City of Tshwane, City of Mogale within Gauteng. And we have recently very excitedly just planted a new network in the Western Cape. And so our intention is to densify nationally throughout the country.
Currently, we have 7,000 public space cameras coming into our network. And these are made up of license plate recognition cameras, as well as overview cameras. And it’s important to clarify the difference between the two. The license plate recognition cameras just do exactly just that, pick up license plates. Whereas the overview cameras have a specific AI analytic overlaid over it which picks up unusual behaviors and they work really well in conjunction together in terms of how it presents the data into the control room.
Chris Steyn (01:39.45)
Yes, I was going to ask you about that technology. Is that evolving still?
Michael Varney (01:45.432)
In terms of the evolving of the technology and the software that we use, that really is the major benefits of the Vumacam proof platform is that we use the best of breed technology that we believe is really going to be able to deliver what it needs to at the time. But having said that, we’re not married specifically to any analytic. If we believe that there is something better, we are able to bring it out and plug the new one in and the customer will just see the benefit of it. There’s no blib in the uptime.
Chris Steyn (02:22.786)
Now, what successes have there been as a result of your collaboration with the Gauteng provincial government?
Michael Varney (02:30.668)
So, you know, it’s, there have been a multitude of successes. We look at it from a holistic perspective in terms of the public-private partnership that we’ve been able to achieve.
You know, when Vumacam initially kicked off six years ago, we sold primarily into the private security industry as our primary vertical that we went after. And that has been hugely successful, you know, being able to create a densified network across an area as opposed to specific security companies going and putting up cameras in the areas in which they service. You then you had an issue with an island of connectivity there. And as as criminals would move out of a neighborhood and you didn’t have a camera network there, that caused a big issue. And so we’ve really had to work hard to create a blanket network across the regions that we cover.
And the evolution of our partnership with the private security industry obviously has taken us to the public sector. And so very excitedly, two years ago, the City of Johannesburg became partners of ours, primarily for the Johannesburg Metro Police Department, but also for Emergency Medical Services, Fire, Pickitup, refuse, et cetera, have made use of it.
And then more recently in the last year, we partnered with the Gauteng Provincial Government in order to give them access to the infrastructure across all of the cities and metropoles of Gauteng that we operate in.
The successes that we’ve seen, sort of on the ground successes, are quite tangible and operational from the perspective that we’ve, you know, like one of the best metrics to use is the fact that we have been able to reduce response times from 18 to 30 minutes down to five to 10 minutes. And that is just by virtue of the fact that we are able to determine exactly where the public sector vehicles are, Flying Squad, crime wardens, JMPD, SAPS, et cetera, and then dispatch the most appropriate and closest vehicle to the incident as and when it happens. This also allows us to assist our customers in creating operational efficiencies in it that…
Michael Varney (04:51.402)
So, Chris, we know that you were parked there and that you were five minutes away from the incident. Why did it take you 20 minutes to get there? And so based on this, they’ve been able to create huge efficiencies.
Other great examples have been from a non-crime, well, not really non-crime, but non-violent crime perspective for Pickitup. Throughout the province, we have a huge issue with illegal dumping. And these vehicles are using the verges just to dump refuse or building material, et cetera. And we’ve been able to assist our public sector partners and being able to carry this through from a prosecution perspective, identify the vehicles that are breaking the law, and then assist them and being able to track them down.
Another great example has been in the Emergency Medical Services space. Johannesburg has recently seen a lot of fires in the inner city in these hijacked and abandoned buildings where huge amounts of life have been lost. So through the overview cameras that I was making reference to earlier, you’re able to, the analytic picks up smoke, it knows that it sees this view consistenlty, and that it doesn’t normally see smoke…
Michael Varney (06:12.428)
So the minute smoke is picked up, we’re able then to create an alert and dispatch appropriately, leading to enormous successes in the prevention of the loss of life.
Chris Steyn (06:28.429)
What all would your camera alert you to? Apart from smoke, number plates, suspicious activity, Do you do facial recognition as well?
Michael Varney (06:41.176)
So obviously the ability and the technology for facial recognition is there. The South African legislation hasn’t really caught up quite with facial recognition and the ability to process the personal information such as your face. However, we work very closely with the information regulator who guide the construct of that legislation. And based on that, we are, as soon as the legislation is available, we will be very keen to unpack that opportunity.
Chris Steyn (07:18.151)
When will your coverage be extended to the townships?
Michael Varney (07:25.25)
So this is a really exciting phase of our partnership with the Gauteng Provincial Government. You know, the first phase was giving them access to the existing network and getting the implementation and operationalisation of the access to this huge amount of data in place. And so we have achieved that and it’s working really nicely.
The second phase has been the densification of networks into TISH areas, which are townships, informal settlements and hostels. And based on the data that we use to determine where we densify network, this is crime data, traffic data, information that we get back from the public sector, policing units, we then determine exactly where we should put up the infrastructure. It’s not as easy as just digging a hole and putting a pole up.
This data requires a huge amount of connectivity in order to get the footage back into the various control rooms around the country. So we obviously have to follow a process of applying for wayleaves. Once the wayleave is being granted, we then need to understand is there a fiber line? Is there connectivity? And if there’s not, how do we come up with a solution that will deliver the infrastructure into that area that we require.
And so it’s not as simple as a step-and-repeat in that what we do is we need to understand if in specific TISH areas where you don’t have huge amounts of traffic, it’s more pedestrian use, is that how do we look at putting overview cameras, more overview cameras than we would LPR cameras. And so we work hand in hand with the public sector in order to determine what the requirement is.
Chris Steyn (09:24.63)
Now, are you looking to cooperating or collaborating with provincial governments in areas other than Gauteng?
Michael Varney (09:34.944)
Absolutely. I think that what we spent the last five or six years doing is really providing a use case where this really works well.
We believe in South Africa that there are 11 million CCTV cameras that are turned on every day. We think it’s less than 1% of those that are actually monitored. And so the monitoring is just a portion of it. It’s one thing being able to go out and build a camera network. But the really tough part of it is the uptime, making sure that the infrastructure is up, that it has power, that it has connectivity. Because Murphy’s Law, it’s that incidence where you have load shedding, for instance, and the cameras aren’t on. And you needed that footage over that time.
And so what we have to, what we’ve been able to do is like when we move into areas like the City of Johannesburg or the overall provincial government is to understand what camera infrastructure has been invested and how we can integrate that infrastructure back onto our platform and give it back to our customers with a service level agreement that ensures that the maintenance of the cameras is looked after and that their investment is protected by virtue of the fact that they’re able to get this data back into their environments.
And so I think there is a huge amount of appetite from the public sector generally. I mean, in the Western Cape, where we’ve planted our first network in conjunction with the Saldanha Bay Municipality, is we really don’t believe in rip-and-replace. There’s no point in having taken this big investment that you’ve made and then us coming in and giving you new cameras. Obviously, where cameras need to be upgraded to better technology, we do so. But ultimately, the goal is to be able to integrate all existing infrastructure and bring that into our environment and present it in a way that they can use the data to create efficiencies out in the field.
Chris Steyn (11:50.279)
Thank you. That was Michael Varney, the Chief Commercial Officer of Vumacam speaking to BizNews and I’m Chris Steyn. Thank you, Michael.
Michael Varney (12:03.394)
Thank you, Chris.
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