International ICT solutions provider Huawei has constructed a platform which it believes represents a solid technology backbone for the realisation of the safe city concept in Africa.

At the company's inaugural Safe City Africa Summit held this week in Cape Town, Huawei executives explained the relevance of what the company has called 'the world's 1st visible convergent command & dispatch solution' to public safety and the Safe City concept.

The solution, based on an Operating System that is compliant with all standards and can adapt to Huawei equipment, offers a complete visualisation of incident handling processes and comprehensive convergence of commands.

In a statement to the media the company said the solution "seamlessly integrates eLTE broadband trunking, video surveillance, Unified Communications (UC) and video conferencing systems with a Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system" in order to present a visual overview of command and dispatch.

This convergence of technology is expected to extract and manage high volumes of big data and use analysis to help officials and emergency services prevent incidents, ensure quick response to incidents and effective management of post-incident processes and procedures.

Huawei stressed that the availability of broadband is one of four critical pillars or building blocks, including connectivity, datacentre (cloud), that have to be in place before the solution can even be considered.

From a cost point of view, the company also explained that costs are certainly dependent on a number of factors – such as the size of the city – but overall the comprehensive platform integration and service will require an investment in the region of $150 million.

The safe city concept is heavily dependent on partnerships. Huawei leadership explained that it does not provide the application layers, but partners with local services providers in this regard.

Asked about which city in South Africa could be earmarked for deployment of the safe city solution, the company said that there has been interest from stakeholders such as Tshwane and Johannesburg, but stressed that this is a not a once-off solution implementation, but rather is based on a phased approach to integration.

To date the company has integrated the solution in Kenya, Ghana, Madagascar and Nigeria. Huawei is also looking closely at areas like Angola, Tanzania and Zimbabwe – as well as South Africa.

Eman Liu, President of the Huawei Enterprise Business Group for Eastern and Southern Africa region, said, "We started the enterprise business group in 2011 and our focus is on providing solution to enterprise with a focus on govt, and public sector, in transport and financial sectors...we are offering solutions that support seamless, smart decision making."