NVIDIA has unveiled its new video analytics platform called NVIDIA Metropolis, which has been designed to create artificial intelligence (AI) cities.

The company claims that its new technology platform would help in making cities safer and smarter through its deep learning to video streams that can be used for various applications, including public safety, traffic management and resource optimisation.

More than 50 NVIDIA AI city partner companies are already providing products and applications that use deep learning on GPUs, many of which will be on display this week at the GPU Technology Conference. 

Currently, more than 50 NVIDIA AI city partner companies are already using NVIDIA deep learning to gather real-time insights for making communities safer and smarter as well as improve traffic and resource usage.

Some of the partner companies include Avigilon, Dahua, Hanwha Techwin, Hikvision and Milestone.

NVIDIA Tegra business vice-president and general manager Deepu Talla said: "Deep learning is enabling powerful intelligent video analytics that turns anonymised video into real-time valuable insights, enhancing safety and improving lives.

"With the fast-paced environment of a city, there are a nearly infinite number of activities taking place."

"The NVIDIA Metropolis platform enables customers to put AI behind every video stream to create smarter cities."

The company noted that videos are the largest generator of data, which is captured through millions of cameras that are deployed by government and other establishments, while only a fraction of captured video is used for current monitoring and most of it is stored on disks for later review.

NVIDIA claims that its intelligent video analytics platform has the potential to address this issue using deep learning in cameras, on-premises video recorders and servers, and in the cloud to monitor video instantaneously with accuracy and scalability.

Metropolis is a combination of multiple NVIDIA products that operate on a unified architecture.

The technology platform uses NVIDIA Jetson embedded computing platform, servers and data centres with NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators for performing its deep learning activities, and uses its Quadro professional graphics for rich data visualisation.

The company further explained that its edge-to-cloud platform is supported by NVIDIA's software development kits, including JetPack, DeepStream and TensorRT.

Avigilon chief technology officer Mahesh Saptharishi said: "With the fast-paced environment of a city, there are a nearly infinite number of activities taking place.

"We're excited by the potential of NVIDIA's Metropolis platform, as Avigilon continues to deliver AI-powered surveillance solutions and video analytics that focus users' attention on what matters most, in order to take action."