The City of Calgary in Alberta, Canada and Axis Communications unveiled the ways in which Axis is helping the city to improve both safety and operations via intelligent security technology upgrades. The City of Calgary integrates Axis cameras, security radars, horn speakers, strobes, and analytics to tackle urban problems. The metadata helps with flood mitigation, roadway planning, festival operations, skating rink maintenance, and more. The solution covers 900 sites throughout the city and is monitored 24/7 via a video wall in the Integrated Security Center located in Municipal Hall, allowing operators to visually verify incidents and dispatch officers as needed.

While the initial focus of the smart city initiative was to improve public safety and security in the community, the city's Technology Services team quickly realized that the metadata collected by the Axis cameras could also be used to help modernize other areas of city management, including: Flood Mitigation: Because downtown Calgary sits at the confluence of two major rivers, the potential for flooding is always a concern. To provide river engineers with more precise data collection, Technical Services reprogrammed the Axis PTZ cameras already deployed in the emergency call stations along the river to send out automatic alerts to river engineers if the cameras' analysis shows that the water is rising too fast. Monitoring Festival Crowds:Calgary hosts dozens of festivals throughout the year that attract millions of visitors to the city.

One of its biggest events is the 10-day long Calgary Stampede, a western heritage celebration that includes the world's largest outdoor rideo, chuckwagon racing, and more. Mobile trailers equipped with Axis cameras are dispatched to large events to not only ensure safety and security, but also to help organizers optimize key operational factors like parking, staffing, emergency response, and even the number of garbage cans and portable toilets. Protecting City Parking & Storage Facilities: When the city's largest fleet parking area, Highfield compound, started facing an onslaught of catalytic converter theft, Technical Services was forced to rethink the site's security system.

The team decided to install Axis thermal cameras to watch the entire fence line of the compound and equipped them with AXIS Perimeter Defender so that when the thermal cameras detect a heat signature outside the fence line after hours, they automatically send an alert to security to deal with the situation.