China’s surveillance network moves into the country to catch farmers illegally burning straw
Thousands of infrared cameras set up across northern province of Hebei with aim of stopping fires that can pose serious risk to the environment
As China’s harvest season looms, officials in one rural area have set up a network of surveillance cameras that will allow them to check whether villagers are illicitly burning straw.
The hi-tech system named Blue Sky, designed to monitor breaches of anti-pollution regulations, involves a network of around 4,000 high-definition infrared cameras across the northern province of Hebei.
When the system spots a suspected fire, it can immediately locate the position, shoot a video, take a snapshot and send the information to the phone of monitoring officials, according to the director of the Centre for Environmental Education and Communications in Hengshui city.
The system also generates a daily chart listing suspected fires, which can be sent to city governments, said the director, who only gave his surname Zhou.
Zhou each camera had a monitoring radius of 5km (3 miles) and can cover 78.5 sq km.
At present there are just over 3,490 cameras are in place across Hebei, and there are plans to add around a thousand more to the network.
Hengshui began installing its network of cameras in May, the first part of the province to do so.
“I’ve seen the cameras myself, they respond quickly to even a small spark of fire, they are quite sensitive and effective,” Zhou said.