• Twitter
  • LinkedIn
Smart Cities Connect
  • About
    • Team
    • Media Kit
    • Contact
  • Verticals
    • Community Engagement
    • Digital Transformation
    • Smart Mobility
    • Urban Infrastructure
    • Urban Operations
  • Events
    • Webinars
  • Smart 50 Awards
    • 2023 Smart 50 Awards Application
  • Resources
    • Videos
News Ticker
  • [ January 30, 2023 ] Bulgaria’s Buses Get Digital Digital Transformation
  • [ January 27, 2023 ] Dublin, Ireland Uses Augmented Reality To Bring Back History Digital Transformation
  • [ January 25, 2023 ] Smart 50 Award Winners Demonstrate True Growth in Smart City Implementations Community Engagement
  • [ January 23, 2023 ] Paris Takes To The River For A New Mode Of Transportation Smart Mobility
  • [ January 20, 2023 ] Miami Takes The Gold In Energy And Environmental Design Urban Infrastructure
HomeSmart MobilityLas Vegas Implements Video Analytics for Safer Streets

Las Vegas Implements Video Analytics for Safer Streets

March 22, 2018 Laura Benold Smart Mobility

The City of Las Vegas attracts 40 million visitors, annually, and takes mobility of its visitors and citizens very seriously. Hear more about how they integrate vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists and collect meaningful data:

In a traditional sense, city streets are the exclusive domain of motor vehicles, but the reality is that pedestrians and cyclists are in the mix, and their safety needs to be assured.  In the past, the only way to get a true sense of how vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists interact was to post people in an area to conduct counts over a long period of time.  Video technology and the emerging field of video analytics have removed that burden to enable real-time collection and presentation of metrics related to the movements of vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists.  The City of Las Vegas and its technology partner have installed “smart cam” at intersections in the downtown Innovation District to collect data in real-time 24/7.  This data is analyzed and visualized to suit the needs of different stakeholders. Video analytics ingests and analyzes the raw data so that it may be displayed in a readable format and provide valuable insights, not only for public safety, but also for businesses looking to invest in area.  In addition, bicycle-counting and parking space analysis can improve transit efficiency which is imperative for a city attracting 40 million annual visitors.  Leveraging data in a practical and understandable way allows all stakeholders to make more objective decisions, implement operational efficiencies, increase citizen engagement and deliver services.

Q: What does the term ‘smart city’ mean to you, and how does your project contribute to a larger smart city vision?

A: A “smart city” uses technological and social solutions in an innovative ways on the domains of public safety, economic growth, education, mobility, equity and people.  Such a city addresses the challenges posed by these domains in ways that are economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable.  Embracing the smart city principles, the City of Las Vegas has opportunities to solve widespread problems, to amplify its strengths, and to attract capital and talent.  This particular project has had a positive impact on the city’s planning and operations by accelerating staff’s understanding of how people actually behave when navigating city streets, either in a vehicle, on a bicycle or on foot.  The introduction of cutting edge video cameras combined with computer-aided analysis of the video feed displayed in real-time on a dashboard depicting metrics of importance to decision makers is the epitome of being smart.  With this project, the city has a “single pane of glass” enabling city officials to act based on accurate, timely information.

Q: Why is the implementation of your project transformational in our current society?

A: Citizens in our hyper-connected society are used to receiving accurate information they depend on immediately.  Their expectation extends to city government in that they trust it to have important information it depends on just as quickly.  People make decisions throughout their day based on information curated from multiple sources.  City staff do the same, but they actually have a hand in deciding what is important data to collect, how to collect it, and how to vet it so that it is trustworthy.  This project, which collects and analyzes data about the behavior of people driving vehicles, riding bicycles and walking, provides city officials an aggregated view of how they all interact with each other and with city assets such as traffic signals and signs/markings.  And this data is collected and analyzed over time to provide city officials with trends that can possibly be used as predictors of behavior.  This insight becomes part of the city’s planning, design and operations aimed towards making the city streets as safe as possible.

Q: What advice did you receive along the way that helped you complete your winning project?

A: A key piece of advice was that technology, big data and GIS can inform, but they still must be infused with reality.  In the past, planners mapped building conditions, uses, etc. block by block, combining the data for each block because that was the simplest way to summarize it.  They combined data for each side of the street with data from the other three sides of the block, ignoring the street.  This resulted in a graphic depiction of an area, but it promoted the image of streets as dividers rather than as unifiers.  With advances in technology, such as the introduction of video analytics to provide a true picture of what is occurring on the street itself, planners are able to alter that mindset so that streets become as important as the block.  That mindset will result in better designs for safer streets.

Q: What advice would you give a city community or a solution provider looking to implement a municipal-level project?

A: Every city wants to be a safe city that employs data analytics to inform planners, designers, officials and field staff.  We have come to expect that digital technology connects people; and that the Internet of Things connects everything so that every single thing can be identified and geo-localized; and that we need real-time data collection and analytics to maintain situational awareness.  Pressure is on us to identify challenges (e.g. pedestrian safety) then seek solutions that address public concerns using a combination of digital and social innovation.  Technology and analytic techniques are important components of strategic alignment to improve government operating efficiencies and service delivery.  But neither one of these are strategies, nor are they sufficient alone for effective leadership.  They are just tools and one subsystem of the complex dynamics and inter-dependencies of a smart city.

Q: What does it mean to you to win the Smart 50 Awards?

A: It is an honor having the Smart Cities Connect organization and its partners recognize what is the culmination over a tremendous amount of work by a large team of people all focused on a single outcome…to make City of Las Vegas streets some of the safest in the nation.

  • community engagement
  • Governance
  • open data
  • transportation
Previous article
Next article

Related Articles

San Francisco Installation of View Glass Drives Significant Returns

HAAS Alert Uses Audio Sensors to Send Notifications and Reroute Drivers

An Interview with Bellevue Smart at Global City Teams Challenge Expo 2017

Tweets by smartcityc

Archives

  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
Stay connected
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Privacy Policy & Terms of Use

© Copyright 2021 Smart Cities Connect, Produced by TechConnect