5 cool civic startups on display at the 2015 Congress of Cities

Placemeter

Transportation and walkability continue to be issues central to citizen satisfaction and a city’s economic success, but some cities are making decisions on how to invest in these areas without the relevant data, said David Fine, a product manager at Placemeter. He wants to change that.

“The problem is there’s no data out there that can tell you how many people are walking on a sidewalk at a given time,” Fine said. “That makes it hard to understand how people are using your city.”

Placemeter taps into existing city video cameras and uses software to take those video streams and measure how many people are walking on a sidewalk or driving along a road. The algorithm processes the video in real-time and aims to measure near misses between pedestrians and traffic, and measure the return on investment for walkability and transportation projects.

The company strikes a different chord than most sensor-based Internet of Things companies. While Placemeter does offer cities its own sensors to help manage the analysis of road and walkway use, it mainly aims to link into the infrastructure that already exists with video cameras.

“The entire IoT industry is focusing on infrastructure and building sensors into infrastructure,” Fine said. “We’re working with video processing in real time so that we can ingest any sort of video your city has.”