Infoway
Praia Grande was the first in Brazil to install the Information Highway, a fiber optic interconnection of all municipal government offices, which resulted in more than 300 km of cables installed in the main streets and avenues. With this network was also possible to install more than 1,200 video cameras along the busiest places of the city as well as in public buildings and monuments. The entire city is monitored by these cameras, a central, directly interconnected with the Municipal Guard and the Military Police. Thus, rates of police incidents fell 60%, and vandalism of public facilities in the city, by 40%.
Today, Praia Grande is the city with the largest number of surveillance cameras in the Americas, and the second in the world, second only to the city of London in United Kingdom. There is a program of installation, the next two years (from 2007), 900 more cameras, overtaking even London in the amount of cameras installed.
In addition to monitoring, the Infoway allows data access to any unit of municipal institutions, in real time. This facilitates, for example, medical care, because even before the patient hold the first consultation, the doctor will have access to the entire history of every patient in the care of the municipal health network, including by which medical specialties which there have been consultations, tests, prescription drugs, allergies, and everything else that is part of history.
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