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In a major step towards smart policing, the Gujarat Police is set to organise the country's largest hackathon focused on CCTV integration and AI-based video analytics, bringing together innovators, startups, technology companies, developers and researchers to develop technology-driven solutions for public safety.
The initiative, being organised under the 'Gujarat Police Innovation Challenge 2026', aims to create a smarter, faster and more effective security ecosystem in the state. Under the guidance of Gujarat Director General of Police G S Malik, the challenge will focus on developing scalable artificial intelligence solutions for real-world policing requirements. One of the key objectives of the initiative is to establish a unified surveillance network connecting more than 80,000 CCTV cameras installed across Gujarat. These cameras are currently operated by different government departments and may use different vendors, technologies, Video Management Systems and network architectures. The hackathon will seek technological solutions capable of integrating these diverse systems and enabling seamless surveillance across the state. The proposed network is expected to strengthen the ability of law enforcement agencies to monitor incidents, identify suspicious activity and respond more quickly to potential security threats. A major feature of the competition will be the use of live CCTV camera feeds. According to Gujarat Police, participants will, for the first time in the country in such a competition, be required to develop and test solutions using real-world policing scenarios and live surveillance feeds. The challenge will test technologies capable of identifying suspicious persons, vehicles and unusual activities and generating alerts in real time. Other capabilities that will be tested include automatic number plate recognition, vehicle tracking, watchlist matching and cross-camera search. The initiative is also intended to move beyond conventional surveillance by exploring how artificial intelligence can help police personnel process large volumes of video data and identify relevant information more efficiently. The competition will be conducted in two stages. The first stage, called the Open Innovation Challenge, will select participants under two categories. The first category will be open to students and small and medium-sized startups, while the second will include large startups and established technology companies. The second stage will be the Finale, in which the six best-performing teams from the first stage will demonstrate their solutions in a live production environment based on real-world policing scenarios. The winning teams will receive cash prizes totalling Rs 37 lakh, providing an additional incentive for technology innovators to develop practical solutions for policing and public safety. The hackathon is expected to commence in September 2026. Details regarding participation, eligibility criteria, rules and guidelines have been made available on the official Gujarat Police portal. The initiative is being organised with technology partnership support from i-Hub, Gujarat, while DA-IICT and the National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU) are providing knowledge partnership support. The Gujarat Police initiative comes as law enforcement agencies increasingly explore the use of artificial intelligence, automated surveillance and integrated command-and-control systems to strengthen policing. By bringing together technology developers and police officials around live operational challenges, the state aims to develop solutions that can potentially be scaled across its extensive CCTV network. With more than 80,000 cameras proposed to be brought onto a single integrated network, the project could significantly enhance Gujarat's surveillance capabilities while providing a platform for testing AI-based tools in real-world policing situations. (ANI)
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