City-friendly cameras

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

Above: Brussels is now

implementing a low-emissions zone (LEZ), and is using Macq cameras for enforcement

Below: A Macq ALPR camera

installed on a city street

real time, to all stakeholders, and also to citizens, with reliable discretion and respect for their privacy.

In the Flemish region of Belgium alone, there are 3,555 cameras operational, in over 70 police areas, for which Macq has installed its fully automated and integrated ALPR systems. This has enabled the company to gain valuable feedback from valued customers and users in the field.

In 2010, as one of the early adopters, the city of Mechelen installed 77 ALPR cameras in 43 locations, mostly on the inbound access roads to its center. The initial aim (among many other applications) was to discourage the criminals that frequently operated in the city at that time. Since then, the local police have solved 172 cases and collected a wealth of other extremely valuable data, for terrorism taskforces of the federal police, for example.

Immediate potential

Bart Somers, the mayor of Mechelen (nominated World’s Best Mayor in 2017) immediately saw the potential of the system. In 2017, he invested in 59 additional Macq ALPR cameras and the most recent M3 software suite, representing a total investment of approximately €1.25m (US$1.47m) The city calculated that it would recoup this investment within less than three years. According to the newspapers, the city of Mechelen issued over €1.9m (US$2.2m) in fines in less than one year for unauthorized access violations in its medieval city center. In the first four years after the introduction, more than 162,000 access violations were (automatically) fined. In addition, €1.25m of unpaid federal traffic taxes were recovered. Mechelen also uses its ALPR camera system as a low-emissions zone (LEZ).

With the new investment in Mechelen in 2017, the main goal was for trajectory speed control (average speed measurements) on the access roads, to improve quality of life in the city center. These Macq cameras are active 24/7 and 365 days per year, and they register, recognize and process over 1.3 million license plates per week. Within weeks of the additional installation, the Mechelen police force caught eight criminal gangs using the M3 database automated blacklist alert module.

Catching criminals

Oud-Turnhout, a smaller city in the north of Belgium, installed 27 Macq ALPR cameras, along with the smart software and database suite. The system caught a notorious car thief during its startup test phase with just three cameras and only the blacklist module active. The inhabitants of one neighborhood were harassed so often by burglars and home/car jackers that they told the mayor of Oud-Turnhout they would pay for an ALPR camera out of their own pockets (at a cost of about €30,000 (US$35,280)) if the city refused to install one in their neighborhood.

The Oud-Turnhout area has more than 150 smart ALPR cameras in operation 24/7 and 365 days a year, with an impressive return on security, traffic safety and mobility. Using powerful application modules has also enabled the local police to apply complex search queries. The city of Turnhout’s police chief, Roger Leys, stated that he “would reduce the number of cars without valid insurance in his police zone to zero in a matter of months” using the Macq M3 system.

Due to the tremendous success of this technology in the field, many adjacent police zones have also decided to install and implement Macq’s proven systems. And the different police zones in the region quickly decided to share their data with each other (an easy task when using M3) to increase their impact on regional crime. In Zoersel, an hour’s drive west of Oud-Turnhout, this led to the arrest of a gang of violent home-jackers who had murdered a 60-year-old man.

Ben Weyts, the minister of the Flemish government responsible for mobility, is passionate about permanent and mobile ALPR technology for trajectory control. He wants to increasingly invest in additional smart ALPR camera systems to empower his fight against traffic casualties.

Capital idea

Finally, following the example of other large European cities, such as Paris and Berlin, Brussels has decided to implement a LEZ, which will ban the worst-polluting vehicles from the entire Brussels-Capital Region as of January 2018. Brussels appointed Macq to install a ring of hundreds of cameras around the region, along with all the central database servers, communications lines and M3 back-office software suite.

As a pioneer in traffic automation and a trusted city partner for almost a century, Macq was honored to be given the chance to help lead the Belgian capital into the new era of smart mobility, and to improve the quality of life for its citizens in the 21st century. n