AI-Integrated Community Safety Solutions for Smart Cities: A Study Towards SDG 11

Safety in rapidly urbanizing cities like Chennai is becoming an increasingly difficult task as human populations and density of cityscape continues to grow, exposing the insulation of traditional measures in theft prevention, managing medical emergencies and fire hazards. The conventional approaches are usually reactive, fragmented and do not have real time coordination and integrated response resources. This paper shows the need for extremely advanced technological responses, namely AI based technologies, to deal with these urban safety problems. Across Chennai, 408 residents from different North, South, East and West regions had been included in a public opinion survey. The survey tried to find out about perceptions of the community safety, incidents of theft and gas leak, awareness about Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and open towards AI facilitated safety technologies. Results show varied perceptions for perceived safety, massive crime experiences, and major fears of gas leaks. Much is known about SDGs in general, with SDG 11 & SDG 9 in particular, but there is little awareness about what an AI can do to help reach these goals. This, however, is backed by strong support for AI driven enhancements in safety including smart alarms, surveillance systems and environmental sensors. The findings show that AI will play a critical role in enhancing community safety with real time monitoring, quick response mechanisms along with proaction of threat. It highlights how AI enabled safety technology can contribute to urban resilience and sustainability by setting the course of AI enabled smart home and community safety systems to resonate with the needs of urban residents and sustainable development goals.