BBC reports on Crowd Vision technology

In her article published today the BBC Technology Reporter Jane Wakefield explains the role Crowd Vision plays in saving lives and keeping people safe at events like the Hajj pilgrimage. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24463736.

CrowdVision looks forward to the Smart Airport Experience project at LCY

CrowdVision is an integral part of the Smart Airport Experience project being launched at London City Airport and announced by Living PlanIT today.  Our technology will help the airport to measure, analyse and improve passenger flows, creating opportunities for innovation and delivering faster journeys and improved passenger experience.  

CrowdVision’s unique passenger analytics capability provides airports with very accurate measures of passenger volumes and dynamics in every corner of the airport every minute of the day. Live dashboards and alerts communicate data to operators, enabling rapid and effective responses to crowding problems, and adjustments to staffing levels at security and immigration checkpoints to align capacity with real demand.  Passengers can be empowered with live forecasts of wait times and journey times, taking control of their own airport experience. And, over time, a CrowdVision deployment provides airports with a rich passenger analytics database – to evidence business cases for investment and SLA negotiation, and to drive layout changes and operational process improvement.

Crowd Vision's work at Mecca attracts attention

This month Crowd Vision is once again working with the Saudi authorities at the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca. 

Since 2006 our technology has helped keep pilgrims safe during what is one of the largest human gatherings on the planet. 

This year we are introducing further innovations to help make crowd management easier, some of which have received media coverage.  You can read more here at the On Islam website: http://bit.ly/S7CJbU

Crowd Vision successfully raises investment for growth

Press Release: 27 July 2012

London-based crowd analytics software specialist, Crowd Vision, has closed a substantial funding round which will enable the business to expand international sales activities and execute product development plans. Investors comprise the UK Government sponsored Angel CoFund and a number of UK and overseas investors.

 
The company offers a highly innovative software product that extracts crowd insights from video feeds in busy locations, enabling customers to understand and intervene in their crowds. The software has already been deployed at scale in Mecca where it helps to keep millions of pilgrims safe as they attend the Hajj. Beyond crowd safety it can provide accurate crowd counts, improve pedestrian flows and help businesses optimise their operations based on live and accurate crowding data.

Fiona Strens, Crowd Vision CEO said “Crowding is a global phenomenon of our time. Whether struggling through commuter crowds or soaking up a festival atmosphere, we all experience crowding in everyday life. Crowd Vision provides unique, actionable data on crowd numbers, patterns and dynamics helping our customers turn a challenge into a business opportunity. Crowd Vision is committed to enabling our customers to deliver Safer Crowds and Smarter Cities across the globe. We were delighted that funding offers exceeded our target, as this investment provides us with the means to execute aggressively to address increasing demand.”

Crowd Vision demonstrates the science of crowds on BBC1

Crowd Vision’s Anders Johansson and Andrew Beddard featured in an episode of the BBC popular science programme ‘Bang goes the theory’, broadcast on 2 April 2012.  Thanks to BBC iPlayer, you can see Anders and Andrew demonstrating some of the principles behind our analytic techniques here http://t.co/C3OJiH0Y.  Due to BBC restrictions this access is time-limited and only works within the UK.  We hope to be able to share a version with those of you outside the UK in due course.

The BBC producers were particularly interested in how our scientific research into crowds could lead to practical interventions to make cities more liveable, and selected a very rainy London Bridge as an illustration of how large groups of people can exhibit signs of self-organisation, even at relatively high densities.  In these settings, it doesn’t take much for a disruption to cause problems, and we used Crowd Vision software to analyse commuter crowds during morning rush hour and highlight key dynamics.  We then helped the BBC stage a classic demonstration of how planners can use building design to influence crowd movement and improve flow – aided by some cake-related incentives.

More seriously, we’ve been encouraged at the growing interest in the media and mainstream debate about the challenges of crowds, and the recognition that these challenges cut across many different market sectors and professional disciplines.  So, even if we have to simplify the explanations for a prime time family audience, we’re happy to be able to help the BBC share the ideas more widely.

 

Crowd Vision launches news blog

This is the first news update from the Crowd Vision team.  With crowd-related matters increasingly a feature of mainstream media, we wanted to make it easier to keep up with what Crowd Vision is doing to make cities and spaces smarter and safer.

As we write, our CTO, Dr Anders Johansson, is once again in Mecca, deploying the latest version of our core Crowd Vision software to help keep pilgrims safe during the Hajj.  This is now the fifth year for Anders at the Hajj, and it’s exciting to see the roll out of our products on the new metro system.
 
Elsewhere in the world we continue with the equally important work of using Crowd Vision to deliver insights into retail and commercial environments.  Client confidentiality is a feature of many of these deployments, but as work advances we hope to be able to share details. We’ll also be using this news blog to highlight other crowd-related developments, whether news stories, innovations, or simply ideas we found interesting. Watch this space!