A facial recognition system was installed on piers recently in Pingdingshan, Central China's Henan Province, to warn students not to enter the water.
A panoramic camera covering 200 square meters was installed under a bridge in Pingdingshan and anyone entering the monitored area will activate a loudspeaker looping safety warnings, Wang Ke, the project manager said in a video by thepaper.cn.
Seven additional face recognition cameras are set to catch the trespasser's face and compare it to a database, according to Wang. When the person's identity is clear, the loudspeaker will call the person, usually a minor, by name.
"The loudspeaker will warn the child that their behavior has been reported to their parents and teachers. Children, awed by the alert, will leave the dangerous areas very quickly," Wang said.
With an accuracy rate of 97 percent, the system will send information to the trespasser's guardian and the water management department.
"It is an innovation to use a drowning prevention technique rather than a rescue afterwards," Lu Wenxin, deputy director of the education bureau, told local media.
The database consists of 110,000 students from 81 nearby schools and will be extended to 120 dangerous water areas in Pingdingshan.
Drowning ranks third among all causes of death for 1-to-4-year-old children in China. An average of 40 primary and secondary school students die of drowning each day. Some 68.2 percent of students who died of drowning were primary school students.
