Road users kept safe in Czech Republic with vehicle classification analytics 

Hanwha Vision works with the City Council of Czech town, Brandýs nad Labem-Stará Boleslav, for road user protection with vehicle analytics.

Brandýs nad Labem-Stará Boleslav in Czech Republic is known as “the city of two cities”, thanks to its history as a pair of towns spread over both banks of the Elbe River; located in the Prague-East District, the two towns were merged in 1960.

The town is important economically and culturally, as it features numerous national cultural monuments, the oldest pilgrimage site in Bohemia and Brandýs nad Labem Castle at its centre. As such, it is a popular tourist destination, but around 20,000 citizens also call the city home.

In 2006, the City Council had construction begin on the municipal camera surveillance system (MKDS). There are multiple camera points across the city, including Komenského Square, the bus station, the town hall, and the Garden ice rinks. As part of the wider public safety agenda, the City Council wanted to install ANPR cameras to better understand the flow of vehicles entering and exiting specific areas of the city to inform traffic management. This data can also be used in spatial planning.

With its AI-powered Road AI and RoadWatch functions, the city used Hanwha Vision to provide 10 PNO-A9081RLP and 10 XNO-6123R/RW cameras, alongside an SSM recording server, decoders, the TID-600 intercom, among others. It was a new installation that needed to provide control room staff and frontline police officers with high-quality footage of vehicle makes, models, colours and licence plates. The Police of the Czech Republic and crisis management authorities also have access to the system as part of their close cooperation with the city.

Vehicle classification analytics 

The PNO-A9081RLP offers Brandýs nad Labem-Stará Boleslav an all-in-one solution featuring ANPR, Make/Model/Colour Recognition (MMCR) and vehicle classification analytics, pre-installed and ready to use. The cameras cover one lane of traffic at speeds up to 70km/h.

With eyewitness accounts often being inaccurate or incomplete, particularly with vehicle licence number plates, the ability to search for vehicles by make, model and colour is, Hanwha Vision believe, of great help to investigating teams when looking to find footage of a vehicle involved in an incident.

Similarly, with criminals frequently swapping the licence number plates on vehicles in order to avoid ANPR identifying them as stolen, police are said to be able to use the make, model and colour search criteria to cross-reference against reports of stolen vehicles.

Footage for forensic investigations

Since the launch of the system, Hanwha Vision has said that several stolen vehicles and criminals have been detected. Vehicles are also classified into seven vehicle types (car, SUV, van, LCV, truck, bus or motorcycle), said to allow operators to provide quicker responses to traffic incidents or reports of dangerous driving. Operators are also said to gain long-term insights into road and parking usage, with planners able to take any trends into account when considering widening roads or creating new bus and cycle lanes.

Meanwhile, the XNO-6123R/RW cameras come pre-installed with RoadWatch ANPR, designed for monitoring urban traffic and can cover one lane of traffic travelling up to 90 km/h and 30m IR (infrared). Key events and information are said to be quickly displayed for operators, aiding their situational awareness and response times.

Eventually, the plan is to connect the outputs from the two camera models to police databases to further improve incident response times and aid investigations. Currently, the city police can see what’s happening on a video wall or with remote footage on their phones and tablets.

Since the traffic solutions were installed, the city police have used the footage for forensic investigations into crimes committed, said Hanwha Vision. The CCTV system is also a visible deterrent for dangerous drivers and other traffic violations.

Future expansion of the system is planned, depending on subsidies available to support it. The Brandýs nad Labem-Stará Boleslav team also plans to invest in Wisenet Wave to further improve mobile connectivity for frontline responders.

Free Download: The Video Surveillance Report 2023

Discover the latest developments in the rapidly-evolving video surveillance sector by downloading the 2023 Video Surveillance Report. Over 500 responses to our survey, which come from integrators to consultants and heads of security, inform our analysis of the latest trends including AI, the state of the video surveillance market, uptake of the cloud, and the wider economic and geopolitical events impacting the sector!

Download for FREE to discover top industry insight around the latest innovations in video surveillance systems.

Download The Video Surveillance Report