The VLOED-project: measuring crowd densities

In the context of the Smart City strategy, the city of Bruges is constantly working to expand its relevant data. Measuring crowd and people flows is interesting for cities as it helps the local economic sector to be better informed and to make decisions for e.g. staff deployment. The VLOED-project is a collaboration between the cities Bruges and Ghent and is aimed at gathering useful information about the crowd densities in the cities in a variety of ways, as well as gaining insights about the economic impact of these crowds on the city. By using various sensor technologies like cameras and RF beacons, crowd data is collected. The data is further analyzed to detect trends, predict algorithms with the help of AI and data science and explore correlations with, for example, events like shopping Sundays. The whole solution serves as a prediction tool for the city and its local merchants.