Dubai Police to have most modern operations room

According to Lieutenant Colonel Dr Khalid Al Mirri, Director of Communications and E-development Department at the General Department of Operations, the new facility, which the Dubai Police will receive in March 2006, consists of nine sections which will enable it to keep in touch with growth and developments in the next 15 years. These sections include telephones, hotlines, emergency calls 999, traffic accidents control, officer on duty, criminal accidents control. The new operations room would accommodate 87 personnel and it will have a wall with 40 TV screens. The room also has a special gasket for inserting photos of wanted persons, newsreel, and three-dimension maps which could be zoomed. The room is well-equipped with hi-tech devices to control and keep an eye on all streets in the emirate of Dubai.

Lt. Colonel Al Mirri said that there are nearly 1,080 cameras linked to the Operations Room for controlling all trade markets and residential areas. In addition to the already functioning 26 ones, as many as 38 new cameras would be installed in some areas. The Control Room would be connected with control cameras in 13 trade centres. Police will thus have an easy access to any spot inside these shopping centres. The new system can access four cameras in a centre at one time, he said, adding that some shopping malls have more than 100 cameras. The existing cameras will be connected to seven police stations through the Operations Room. The emirate of Dubai has seen a fast growth in the construction sector, he noted. In order to keep pace with that growth, helicopters from the Police Air Wing would be deployed after providing them with cameras to shoot the incidents and convey the same to the Operations Room. The sophisticated cameras are provided with a thermal system, which detects thermal objects such as persons in the dark. The new hi-tech cameras could be used to rescue people in accidents like drowning, building collapse, deserts and the like.

Lt. Colonel Al Mirri disclosed that the public — nationals and expatriates — could send their SOS to the Operations Room just by pushing a button in the motor vehicle. The SOS message will be immediately transmitted to the Operations Room. Through the message, the location will be detected before sending the police patrol or the ambulance as soon as possible. In case of car collisions, a signal will automatically be transmitted to the operations room once the air bag bursts open.

Elaborating, Lt. Colonel Mirri said that car dealers were contacted to provide these facilities in the cars which will be manufactured in the future. He said some car factories such as BMW, Mercedes and Nissan responded to the call of the Dubai Police and underwent an experiment which proved successful. An agreement, he said, was also reached with private companies to provide equipment which could be fixed in old model cars. The system at the Operations Room was designed in a way that it could receive SMS sent from the ‘Thuriyya’ mobile telephones.

Lt.-Col Mirri spoke about the three dimensional e-map project, through which every nook and corner of the emirate would be detected. The new project can pinpoint the locations of the patrols, military areas, and the possibility of containing and besieging as well as closing certain roads.