Sirens will alert people in a radius of four kilometres

As part of its efforts to save lives, the government is going to install sirens across the State to alert people on the occurrence of lightning. The sirens will alert people in a radius of four kilometres.

A pilot project has already been undertaken successfully in a couple of villages in Visakhapatnam and West Godavari districts.“The stage is now set for their launch in 600 villages. The project will be scaled up later,” said Babu A., CEO of Real-Time Governance (RTG) Centre at the Secretariat.Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Babu said: “Lightning alerts are currently being issued through the local officials, mobile applications, and various other channels. But there is always scope for people not knowing about the weather warning, as there are instances of people losing their lives even after the alerts are sounded well in advance. When sirens are installed, people will hear the warning instantly and stay safe.”

“At present, alerts are being sounded half-an-hour before lightning strikes, and sometimes three hours before its occurrence. For this, the data being disseminated by the India Meterological Department (IMD) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is used,” he said.“Buoyed by the success of the RTG project, the government has embarked on the establishment of RTG centres in every district headquarters, for which land has already been identified. Work has started in Chittoor, Guntur, and the two Godavari districts,” Mr. Babu said, and added that these Centres would go on stream by the year-end.

Another major initiative, Mr. Babu said, would be the establishment of a surveillance centre in an annexe coming up at the Secretariat for keeping a tab on the data to be generated by close to 18,000 CC TV cameras across the State.The number of existing cameras is 3,000.

The cameras will be PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) type, which are capable of recognising faces, and tracking vehicle number plates and violations at traffic signals.They will help in video analytics.These cameras will be in place in another three to four months.