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Cameras that make cities more livable By harnessing the latest data-processing software, it is possible to turn a network of ALPR cameras into a smart, crime-fighting system that will help law enforcement agencies not only in transportation, but right across any city Words | Injaas De Mul, Macq, Belgium
Macq’s ALPR cameras (inset) are being used to control access to the medieval city center of Mechelen, Belgium
Over the past few years, the most innovative cities have deployed smart technologies to increase the safety, mobility and health of their citizens, thereby improving the quality of urban life. The rapid growth in fully automated and integrated automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) camera solutions for traffic management, urban access control and area supervision is an important part of this trend. The application possibilities of ALPR are far-reaching. From trajectory control (average speed measurements), red light enforcement and access control applications, the technology has quickly evolved into applications such as counting and classifying vehicles, measuring transition times of vehicles, measuring flow density, creating ‘origin destination’ matrices
for traffic analysis, detecting traffic-jam formation, dynamic crossroad traffic regulation, smart parking guidance, low-emissions zone (LEZ) control, measuring the height of vehicles, and more. Recently, even driver face recognition has become technically possible. In addition, such a system creates tremendous added value for law enforcement, and consequently a significant improvement in public safety, through area security and automated ‘blacklist’ alerts on suspect vehicles, both of which help complex police investigations.
The M3 platform The use of high-performance cameras is a crucial part of any solution, but it is even more important to also have a suitable processing platform, capable of taking
advantage of this huge collection of data and transforming it into useful information for end users. That is why Macq, in addition to its high-resolution ALPR camera products, developed the M3 platform (pronounced M-cube), a truly innovative concept for managing large ALPR databases. The modular M3 suite can very easily be adapted, tailored and upgraded to meet all current and future needs of the most demanding customers in the field. Via the integrated M3 toolbox, Macq provides its customers with fully modular and adaptable functionality and provides end users with tailor-made applications that offer great flexibility of interfacing with third-party systems through a wide range of popular web services (e.g. Google Maps). As such, Macq can make data available online and in
Annual Showcase 2018 | Intertraffic World
