Running public cameras in a municipality: roles, alarms and police requests
A municipality can buy a hundred cameras in a year. The harder part is deciding who looks at them and what happens next.
Start with process
- Who is the operator? Name the roles: operator, supervisor, auditor.
- What counts as an alarm? Offline, tamper, motion in a closed zone.
- What do they do when one fires? Write the steps. They should appear beside the alarm, with the related cameras and the video before and after.
- Who do they call if nobody acknowledges? Set escalation: after five minutes, call the next person.
- Who answers police? One request, approval and delivery path.
What the platform has to hold
- A map of Nepal or a floor plan with camera icons and field-of-view cones.
- An alarm queue with priority, assignment and acknowledgement reasons such as false alarm, guard sent or police called.
- A command dashboard of sites, open alarms and offline devices.
- Feed sharing with police, with expiring access.
- An audit log of who watched what.
What the law asks of public bodies
Public bodies that install CCTV are to notify the police or District Administration Office within 15 days, and keep footage for at least three months. See the Privacy Act, 2075 summary. LunaCam fills in the notice.
Start small
Pick one corridor, run the process for a month and fix what does not work. Then add sites. See LunaCam for municipalities.
Questions people ask
Can several departments share one system?
Yes. Sub-organisations, sites and roles are built in.
Can police see a live feed?
A live feed can be shared with another organisation. Revoking stops new access, and existing tokens last up to five minutes.
What about number plate reading?
Analytics, including number plates in Nepali formats, are rolling out next.