CHICAGO -- Chicagoans may soon be the most watched urbanites in the world, as the city rolls out a new surveillance system that will allow a high-tech hookup from thousands of cameras across the city to a central operations center.

Images: New Surveillance System
Video: High-Tech Surveillance Set Up

NBC5's Kim Vatis was on hand for the unveiling of the system Tuesday morning.

The system isn't just set to handle special crowd control situations, such as the Taste of Chicago or the Chicago Marathon, Vatis said. The system can, in fact, be put to use in a crisis, such as a terrorist attack or a gunshot fired in a given location.

In a demonstration offered Tuesday, officials showed how a series of cameras are set to respond to specific alerts. As one of the city's surveillance cameras was in place near the corner of Foster and Pulaski avenues, three loud beeps notified workers in the communications center of nearby gunfire.

The camera then actually sensed the source of the gunshots and zoomed in on the subject who had intentionally fired the gun on a nearby basketball court for purposes of the demonstration.

The demonstration also included the system's ability to set up teleconferencing, as participants met with representatives from the Department of Homeland Security in New Jersey, via a teleconferencing screen.

Mayor Richard M. Daley was present for the series of demonstations as well, indicating his satisfaction with the system that he said would be a great benefit to Chicago.

Vatis said there are a number of cameras in place around the city and the system unveiled Tuesday demonstrated how each of the cameras can be controlled from the communications center, each with a zoom capability for zeroing in on points of interest and a 360-degree panning capability.

This real-time view of what's occurring will allow dispatchers and emergency officials to make decisions about any given situation prior to actually arriving at the scene.

While a number of cameras are already in place, 250 more are soon to be put into critical infrastructures and added to the arsenal, Vatis said. All communications are or will be linked to the Federal Aviation Administration, the 911 Center, Homeland Security and city databases. The operation center will also be patched into CTA bus radios, the fire and police departments and the cameras all at once.

"This provide(s) our managers with the information they need to deploy emergency personnel in vehicles to the places where they are most needed," Daley told reporters at Tuesday news conference.

"That's important," he added, "because the key to dealing with an emergency is not just manpower, it's having the manpower in the right place, at the right time, with the right information."

Ron Huberman, Emergency Center Director, said, "We will actually be the first city to have an integrated system for efficient consolidation of all types of real-time information. Now city departments will be better able to share, collect, validate and analyze information, strengthening our goal to mitigate and respond to events and emergencies."

Vatis said Huberman has been nicknamed the "techno-geek," locally as well as in a recent New York Times article about Chicago's new technology.

Huberman and his staff hope to have this new system fully operational by Spring, 2005.