The Lahore Safe City project is part of a region-wide initiative to increase safety by controlling crime and monitoring traffic.

Pakistan’s population has vastly increased in recent years, and women’s safety issues becoming apparent. As effective digital systems are required to maintain the community’s secure city environment, the project comprises a range of highly integrated Safe City systems that focus on a large-scale CCTV installation to transform police operations and provide a new city working structure. It is the first element of the Punjab wide Police Integrated Command, Control and Communication (PPIC3) Centre Programme, aimed to create secure, peaceful and prosperous cities by harnessing modern technology to redefine the capabilities of law enforcement agencies and ensure public safety.

Project planning with a view to safety

The project’s objective is to achieve effective public safety incident tracking and response, reduce traffic violations and improve behaviours. A better transparency and automation in police operations will be implemented using state-of-the-art infrastructure and processes from a new integrated communications, command and control centre.

To visualise the many public safety activities that the centre acts upon, one of the world’s largest video walls has been installed to receive information feeds from the range of the city’s installed sources and key infrastructure systems across the Lahore and the Punjab. This allows the PSCA to identify perpetrators for prosecution and is designed to improve personal and road safety with particular interest paid to areas of the city frequented by women.

Punjab Safe Cities Authority (PSCA) commissioned Arup as a trusted technical advisor to support and provide assurance throughout the project lifecycle.

PPIC3 video wall, Lahore safe city project
The video wall was designed to improve personal safety, road safety and with particular interest paid to areas of the city frequented by women, whose safety has become highly important.

Resilience, security and risk

The multidisciplinary project required an integrated team and systems approach in supporting our resilience, risk and security team, comprising of digital, operations consulting, acoustics, intelligent transport solutions and building experts from across our global network. Our London, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Melbourne teams acted as technical advisors, providing assurance support to the National Engineering Services Pakistan (NESPAK) and Punjab Safe Cities Authority (PSCA) teams.

Arup’s expertise and track record in delivering large scale security systems and technical advice provided confidence that the technical elements were specified, tested and commissioned to appropriate international standards and the solutions were benchmarked against international best practice. We provided an operational solution that supported cultural and organisational change through an integrated technical solution approach.

An integrated visual approach

Arup designed an integrated communications and surveillance system, benchmarked against international best practices, bringing together information from 15 Emergency Control and Dispatch Control suites, CCTV, new centrally controlled road junction traffic light and red-light monitoring systems, road side variable messaging systems and utilised a new private 4G LTE-A network. 

New facilities include 10,000m² of main control and disaster recovery centre with 2,000km of fibre-optic network. We installed 8,000 cameras, monitored by 400 staff in the new Punjab Police Integrated Control, Command and Communications Centre (PPIC3), in the Qurban Police Lines Lahore compound. Mobile video streams from individual field officers’ mobile handsets can also be sent and enabled for viewing at each operator’s console.

Using digital technology to improve safety

Arup’s technical assurance provision added value from concept to delivery, with specifications that delivered enhanced project solutions. We applied international standards for products, rigorously testing capabilities to achieve improved performance of the integrated systems.

We redefined the system’s integration architecture by introducing an enterprise service bus component for facilitating data exchange and integration between PSCA’s applications and Government third parties. Sustainability aspirations supported our approach to specification, encompassing reduced impact of system operations and longevity of the product lifecycle. Solar-powered installations and modular data centre infrastructure were incorporated wherever possible to reduce mechanical and electrical loading. 

Technology advances could see a connected security and integrated communications stretching across city boundaries to make Pakistan safer. This would require integrated systems supported with high-speed, private fixed and mobile 4G networking to transport voice, video and data.