Smartphone detection scanner to identify volume of visitors and behaviors in United Kingdom trade fair

The “Bolton Food and Drink Festival” is celebrated every summer in the town of Bolton, located in Greater Manchester (United Kingdom). It is an event which unites different flavours and tastes from all over the world. The last gathering, in summer 2017, broke records again with more than 267,000 visitors. The organization requires control over the presence and behaviour of the attendants.

Innotech Concepts was selected by the festival organizers to manage a project to monitor visitors data. The start-up specializes in transport, events and urban data collection with a focus on connectivity, public safety and evacuation.

Innotech Concepts chose Libelium’s Meshlium Scanner to deploy this project at the Bolton Food and Drink Festival. Scanning WiFi and Bluetooth devices in the festival area allowed the organizers to study the demand and conduct of the visitors in real-time.

The organizers needed to know the volume of visitors at three key locations including the length of stay and individual journey routes between the festival and local car transport and car parks. The main goal was to create an off-grid solution that could be rapidly deployed as well as being lithium powered. Once deployed, the system scans individuals upon entry and exit.

Two Meshlium Scanner units were installed at the main entrances of the fair and a third device was installed in one of the car parks and local transport parking zones, scanning devices via WiFi and Bluetooth every 15 minutes. 

The main criteria for analysis were:

• Duration of stay.
• Visitor volume per location.
• Visitor volume per day.
• Most popular locations.
• Most popular individual and group routes.
• Total project visitors.

The anonymous data was securely sent via 4G to the proprietary analysis platform, a software specially developed for modelling pedestrians called Innotech Insights Crowded™. The data is electronically analyzed and visual charts are provided alongside the raw data. Additionally, the platform also provides a raw data download option so that the customer has access to the raw data set. This means that a customer can perform their own calculations with the data and also show that the technology and its analysis is transparent, open and honest.

Crowded™ platform is able to process data from hundreds of projects anywhere in the world, and it is provided for both temporary and permanent installations. It includes a fully automated analysis service that provides the end-user with accurate visualizations based on projected pedestrian movements. The system can analyze data from an unlimited number of scanners for an unlimited project duration, which will allow the technology to transcend temporary study applications and support permanent smart city infrastructures.

Furthermore, the platform can incorporate emissions and other pollutant monitoring related to Smart Cities projects as an addition to the service and will utilize Plug & Sense! sensor platform.

Liam Wright, Managing Director, responsible for R&D and Technology Commercial Application at Innotech Concepts Ltd., confirms that they are currently receiving great feedback from their customers and the major interest resides in transport consultancies.

“Libelium are fantastic in their support and they have the most advanced scanning technology on the market, we look forward to a solid working relationship”, comments Liam Wright.

Libelium and Innotech Concepts have launched a new solution kit at The IoT Marketplace –the global IoT e-commerce–. The Libelium-Innotech Smart Crowded Solution Kit includes two Meshlium Scanner to detect devices which works with Bluetooth or WiFi interfaces. These devices can be detected with no need of being connected to a specific access point, enabling the detection of any smartphone, laptop or hands-free car kit which comes into the coverage area of Meshlium. In this kit, all the generated data can be visualized and analyzed through the application Crowded™ developed by Innotech Concepts Ltd.

For more information about our products contact the Libelium Sales Department.

More info:

• Read more about Libelium sensor product lines in the Waspmote, Waspmote Plug & Sense! Sensor Platform and Meshlium Gateway websites.
• For technical details on Meshlium Scanner: Meshlium Technical Guide
• Read more about Libelium sensor product lines in the Waspmote, Waspmote Plug & Sense! Sensor Platform and Meshlium Gateway websites.