Glasgow City Council leader Gordon Matheson opened the new Glasgow Operations Centre (GOC) ahead of the XX Commonwealth Games.
The site brings together Community Safety Glasgow’s (CSG) CCTV operation and Traffcom – the council’s monitoring of the city’s traffic lights and traffic cameras. With the facilities now pooled, CSG and Traffcom have joint access to the city’s entire network of live and recorded CCTV footage.
The centre, based at Eastgate on London Road, is part of the £24m Future Cities Glasgow programme which will also see the installation of digital cameras across the city. The cameras can be programmed to detect unusual activity that can trigger an alarm allowing further investigation by emergency services.
Councillor Matheson said in February: “This is a state-of-the-art facility housing our city’s entire network of traffic cameras and public space CCTV, which will allow us to keep the city running and keep people safe. Having both teams working together and operating under the same roof allows access to more information, more intelligence and quicker identification of incidents on our roads and streets.
“It’s a key element of our Future Cities Glasgow programme, which is demonstrating to the world what a smart city can be like. It will also play an important role in keeping our city running smoothly during the Commonwealth Games.
“Glasgow will be open for business during the Games, but it will not be business as usual, and the opening of this centre shows we’re getting ready.”
The council points to stats that the majority of Traffcom cameras (86 per cent) are trained on areas previously not covered by CSG (52 out of the 62 cameras operated by Traffcom).
Similarly, about a third, 32pc of CSG’s cameras (156 out of the 440 cameras operated by CSG) are helping Traffcom operations.
The integrated operations centre will also reduce the need for police staff to manually search CCTV footage for evidence. Traffcom was previously based on Elmbank Street, while Community Safety Glasgow’s CCTV team has moved to Eastgate from Blochairn.
Photo courtesy of Community Safety Glasgow.
