Gujarat Police plans single network for 80,000 CCTV cameras, through AI-enabled hackathon
Gandhinagar, Aug 17
Gujarat Police will seek to integrate more than 80,000 CCTV cameras across the state into a single surveillance network as part of a nationwide innovation challenge aimed at developing Artificial Intelligence-based tools for policing and public safety.
The Gujarat Police Innovation Challenge 2026, described by the police as the country's largest hackathon focused on CCTV integration and AI-based video analytics, will bring together students, startups, technology companies, developers and researchers to develop solutions for real-world policing requirements.
The initiative, announced on Monday, will focus on overcoming the challenges posed by CCTV systems operating on different vendors, technologies, video management system platforms and network architectures.
The objective is to allow these systems to work together and provide police with faster access to surveillance information. The challenge will also test AI applications using live CCTV feeds and real-world scenarios.
Participants will be required to develop systems capable of identifying suspicious people, vehicles and unusual activities and generating alerts in real time.
Other capabilities to be tested include automatic number plate recognition, vehicle tracking, watchlist matching and searches across multiple cameras.
The police said the use of live feeds in real-world policing situations would be a key feature of the competition.
"The initiative is being organised under the leadership of Director General of Police (DGP) G.S. Malik. It will be conducted in two stages. The first stage, the Open Innovation Challenge, will have two categories. The first will be open to students and small and medium-sized startups, while the second will be for larger startups and established technology companies," officials said.
The six best-performing teams from the first stage will qualify for the finale. They will demonstrate their solutions in a live production environment using real-world policing scenarios. The competition carries total cash prizes of Rs 37 lakh.
The hackathon is expected to begin in September, with participation details, eligibility criteria, rules and guidelines available through the official Sentinel Gujarat portal.
The initiative has technology partnership support from i-Hub Gujarat and knowledge partnership support from DA-IICT and the National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU).
The move comes as police forces increasingly explore AI and integrated surveillance systems to process the growing volume of CCTV footage and assist personnel in identifying and tracking potential security threats.
Gujarat Police's challenge places the emphasis on developing systems that can operate across existing infrastructure rather than relying on a single CCTV technology or vendor.
— IANS
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