The sensors detect and categorize moving objects — pedestrians, bicycles, cars, trucks, buses — but do not collect personally identifiable information, according to Carlos Tamayo, the city's innovation manager. Each moving object is counted with information on direction of travel, date, time stamp and mode of transportation.
Numina, the company providing the sensors, specializes in the computer vision-sensor solution to measure where and how things move at street level: "intelligence without surveillance," according to their website.
Five sensors, also called multimodal counters, have been installed so far with the remaining 21 set to be installed on utility poles over the next two months.
The program aims to collect better data on how many people are traveling through certain areas of the city to meet demand for this type of data from stakeholders including downtown businesses and the city's traffic engineering, economic development, planning and parks departments.
"The city needs more multimodal data for traffic operations, the ability to provide data to potential and current businesses, and for gaining general knowledge about the use of public parks, trails, and public rights of way," Tamayo said.
The plan is to move sensors to new locations after one year for a total of seven to 10 years, which is the life span of the technology.
"We will continue to move the sensors, collect, and analyze data, and provide that data analysis to stakeholders until the sensors reach end of life," Tamayo said.
"We hope that the sensors enable many data-driven decisions to be made for each of our stakeholders through the years."
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