MCD to use smart system to monitor sanitation in Delhi

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) plans to introduce digital surveillance to monitor and conduct daily audit of sanitation management services. The system will use vehicle-mounted cameras to take pictures across the city, and a central control room will analyze the images to generate daily reports about the sanitation situation. The reports will be relayed to individual wards and zones for action. The MCD aims to increase the catchment area by deploying cameras on public transportation vehicles, taxis, and delivery agents. The project will initially be implemented in three wards in Delhi.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) plans to introduce digital surveillance to monitor and conduct daily audit of sanitation management services, senior municipal corporation officials working on the project said.

Vehicle-mounted cameras will take pictures across the city which will be sent to a control room, said officials. (HT Archive)

The civic body’s sanitation department is finalising project report to hire agencies that will deploy a central control room which will receive data from vehicle-mounted cameras that will take pictures across the city.

Garbage removal and the monitoring of sanitation indices are currently carried out on manual basis through sanitation supervisors and private concessionaires.

“The system will analyse the images from various camera streams and generate daily reports about the sanitation situation. These reports will be relayed to individual wards and zones for submitting action-taken reports. Besides monitoring dumping sites and garbage lifting vehicles, we also plan to deploy these cameras on public transportation vehicle, taxis and delivery agents to increase the catchment area,” an official overseeing the finalisation of the project report said.

Similar plans were first floated by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in January this year as part of the Delhi government’s mega road revamp plan. He said that the government would deploy a third-party monitoring system with dashboards and vehicle-mounted cameras to keep a check on the maintenance work of roads across the city.

A second MCD official said that by replacing manual inspections, the system would be more independent and leave little scope for manipulation. “It will be used for levying penalties if the garbage removal work is found unsatisfactory. Our contracts with private concessionaires already have provisions for penalties in case of lapse and it will help in improvement of enforcement,” the official said.

The second official added that under the proposed system, private taxis and vehicles will be paid hourly amount for mounting operational cameras.

“The images will capture the street views and locate the latitude and longitude of garbage heaps, construction waste or even if streetlights are not operational. We are studying the usage of artificial intelligence (AI) in surveillance in Dubai and Ahmedabad for finalising our report. The process is in final stage, and it will be sent to the law department for vetting after which tenders will be called,” the official said, adding that the approximate charges for such surveillance may be around ₹200 per km.

MCD officials say that initially the project will be implemented in three wards — one each in north, south and east Delhi.

Atul Goyal, who heads the United RWAs Joint Action (Urja) — an umbrella body of RWAs in Delhi — said that that the use of technology for removal of human errors and monitoring lapses is a good way forward provided the fail safe and backups are maintained well. “We have seen so many security cameras installed in markets, but at the time of need they are found non-operational. How will MCD keep these cameras running?”

The civic body manages the sanitation and clean-up of 1,397.3 sqkm of area divided into 12 zones — Central, South, West, Najafgarh, Rohini, Civil Lines, Karol Bagh, SP-City, Keshavpuram, Narela, Shahdara North and Shahdara South. While roads wider than 60ft fall under the Public Works Department (PWD), internal roads are managed by the civic body via its 50,000-member strong sanitation staff. The civic body lifts more than 11,000 tonnes of municipal waste every day to its landfills and waste-to-energy plants.