GuardAI: YOLOv8-Powered CCTV Transformation for Ethical Crowd Governance and Instant Urban Threat Response

GuardAI transforms passive CCTV infrastructure into ethical urban safety ecosystems, empowering cities to govern crowds proactively and prevent crises before they escalate. While YOLOv8-based crowd detection systems provide reliable person detection and counting from images and videos, they primarily function as passive monitoring tools that require continuous human supervision. To address this limitation, this paper proposes an enhanced YOLOv8-based crowd detection system integrated with an automated alarm mechanism and a user-friendly Tkinter graphical interface. The system supports both image and video inputs, performs real-time crowd detection and counting, and triggers instant alerts when the number of detected individuals exceeds a predefined threshold. By incorporating automated decision-making and alert generation, the system transforms conventional monitoring into a proactive safety solution. Experimental results demonstrate enhanced responsiveness, usability, and effectiveness for crowd management in high-density environments.