Bordeaux's Camera Network, Ethics Committee and Remote Ticketing

🤖 AI-generated summary of the sources below · 🔎 Last verified 2026-08-10

This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.

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Bordeaux put its first 11 cameras into the pedestrian streets in March 2002 and had 105 by December 2017, when the municipal police moved its urban supervision centre (CSU) into a larger room. By January 2025 the network counted 202 cameras across the city's eight districts, watched around the clock by 40 CSU agents. The centre also issues "videoverbalisations" — parking, traffic, fly-tipping and dangerous-behaviour penalties written remotely from the camera feed. Since 2022 a municipal video protection ethics committee reviews each proposed camera site, a body most comparable networks in the atlas do not have.

Live 📅 since 2002

Outcome🔄 Ongoing

Evidence🏛️ Official

what does this mean?

The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →

Run byVille de Bordeaux — police municipale, Centre de supervision urbain

Scale🏙️ City-wide

📊 Impact

The city reports for 2024: 49,956 calls received, 18,090 intervention requests triggered, 600 judicial requisitions and 2,352 videoverbalisations. Earlier official figures show the same curve from a low base — images handed to the police rose from about 1,500 in 2008 to 28,000 in 2017, and arrests attributed to the cameras from 20 to 700 over the same period.

🎓 Lesson

Bordeaux is a comparatively thin camera city and says so: at the 2017 expansion it counted one camera per 2,380 residents against one per 320 in Nice, one per 500 in Lyon and one per 650 in Marseille. The output is thin in proportion — 202 cameras and 40 full-time agents produced 2,352 remote fines and 600 judicial requisitions in a year. No independent audit of the network's effect exists: the arrest and requisition counts are the police's own, and the local collaborative counter-mapping project has not been updated for Bordeaux since about 2013.

📡 Data & IoT Safety & security Privacy & personal data Sensors & IoT

Sources

↗ Ville de Bordeaux — La videoprotection urbaine a BordeauxOfficial page. "Plus de 200 cameras" across 8 districts, 202 in January 2025; 40 CSU agents working 24h/24, 7j/7; "Depuis 2022, un Comite ethique de videoprotection" reviews each camera site. 2024 figures: 49 956 appels, 18 090 demandes d'interventions, 600 requisitions judiciaires, 2 352 videoverbalisations.

↗ Bordeaux Gazette — Un renouveau pour la videoprotection urbaine a Bordeaux (13 December 2017)Source for the history and the density comparison: 11 cameras in pedestrian zones in March 2002, 105 in 2017; CSU room enlarged from 50 to 130 m2; images to the municipal police from ~1,500 (2008) to 28,000 (2017), arrests from 20 to 700; 530 judicial requisitions in 2017; one camera per 2,380 residents against Nice 1/320, Lyon 1/500, Marseille 1/650. State funding 470,000 euro for 70 cameras plus a 100,000 euro annual municipal budget.

↗ France Bleu / ICI Gironde — Bordeaux: un nouveau centre de videoprotection pour piloter les 105 cameras de la ville (December 2017)Second, independent confirmation of the December 2017 CSU opening and the 105-camera figure. The domain returns HTTP 403 to automated fetching; article existence and content confirmed through search results and cross-checked against the Bordeaux Gazette report of the same week.

↗ Bordeaux sous surveillance — collaborative camera mappingCited only for the lesson's honesty caveat: a crowdsourced counter-mapping project exists but its Bordeaux content is largely dormant (most local entries date to about 2013), so it is NOT used as a source for any camera count.

Continue exploring

Compare this project

🇲🇦 Casablanca Urban Video Surveillance Network · Casablanca Same genre, different accountability: Casablanca's cameras get no independent audit, Bordeaux vets each site through an ethics committee. 🇲🇽 C5 Camera, Panic-Button and Seismic-Alert Network · Mexico City Both publish operator-reported camera output and no outside evaluation — Bordeaux at a far smaller scale, one camera per 2,380 residents. 🇹🇭 Bangkok's Municipal CCTV Network · Bangkok The enforcement gap in two sizes: Bangkok logged 90,907 AI-detected offences and 10,977 paid fines, Bordeaux 2,352 remote fines in 2024.

Explore the wider context

📟 A Reading Is Not a Decision 🛡️ Safety & security guide 🏙️ Bordeaux city profile 📡 Data & IoT projects 📖 Automated speed enforcement (speed cameras)📖 Flood early-warning system 📖 Integrated command and control centre (ICCC)

📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Bordeaux's Camera Network, Ethics Committee and Remote Ticketing” — Bordeaux, France. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/bordeaux-videoprotection-csu/ (last verified 2026-08-10). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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