Big Surveillance Initiatives in the Heartland

Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications recently installed 500 surveillance cameras and integrated them with the existing 4,000 public sector cameras already installed across the Windy City as part of Operation Virtual Shield.

Currently in its third phase, Operation Virtual Shield's network of public surveillance cameras has been billed as the most advanced deployment of intelligent video in the nation since its launch in 2001. Cameras at Boeing, John Hancock, Sears Tower and over 100 other private companies have been integrated into the citywide surveillance grid and feed into the system.

Next steps for the project include extending the network along the city's lakefront and non-central business district locations, as well as adding more video analytic functionality to control how footage is captured and indexed. Without advancing analytics to help intelligently sort and organize footage, increasing the surveillance grid is insignificant.

As ABC News asks, "The technology will grow and so too will the number of cameras. But ultimately, how many cameras do we need, at what cost and how effective are they in fighting crime?"

Chicago police claim the increased number of street cameras have both discouraged crime and also led to arrests in other violent crimes, however there is still room for improvement in order to decrease the growing "Security Gap" between how much data systems can collect and how much humans can analyze.

Chicago is on the right track, but there are still some holes to be filled in this 'virtual shield'.