Machine learning puts Manly on a wave of innovation

High-tech solution delivers parking and crowd control solutions

 

30 September 2015 – Sydney, Australia: A combination of old fashioned ingenuity and ground-breaking technology is revolutionising the way Council monitors parking flow in Manly. It’s also setting a cost-saving example for public sector organisations throughout Australia.

Using Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, a number of parking areas in the Manly area are being targeted by CCTV cameras backed up by special software in order to ensure prompt and proper policing of parking restrictions.

Beyond parking, the high-tech solution is even being considered for crowd control and future community safety measurements and even to predict the surf conditions.

Nathan Rogers, Manly Council’s CIO, said the Council had a large number of smart and connected devices installed in the municipality, including four smart parking stations, about 25 smart parking meters, 20 wireless access points and 100 CCTV cameras, all connected by eight kilometres of fibre optic cable.

The idea to use Machine Learning to monitor car parks was borne after Mr Rogers and his team had seen a viral video showing a technology called How Old, which predicts a person’s age through an uploaded photograph, they wondered whether the use of artificial intelligence might assist Manly Council.

“We’ve got Azure Machine Learning deployed in three locations across Manly at the moment,” Mr Rogers said. “One of them is down at the beach across a large bus parking zone. Lots of buses come to Manly to let tourists out to have a look at the beach, which is great, but we just want to make sure there’s equal access to that space for all tour operators.”

The IT team wrote a program that downloads footage from the camera, passes it and uploads it to Azure Machine Learning.

“Azure Machine Learning has been previously trained on 10,000 ‘normal’ or ‘control’ images from the camera, so each time we upload an image it makes a judgement as to whether it’s normal or whether there’s some sort of anomaly. If Azure Machine Learning tells us there’s an anomaly, we have a script on our end that will email the right people so they can immediately go and check out what’s happening.”

The cutting edge technology is also used in mobility bays located beyond foot patrol distance of the CBD.  In the future it may also be used to provide a community safety tool with the ability to recognize crowds patterns and trigger public place management protocols and safety evacuation plans.

“Before we could use Azure Machine Learning to watch cameras, the locations were really monitored on an ad hoc basis or during regular patrols,” Mr Rogers said. “Now that we have Azure Machine Learning, we can target patrols when they are needed and those resources can do other duties when they aren’t needed at those locations.”

With Manly attracting eight million visitors each year, technology is vital in enabling the Council to service both citizens and visitors.

“The Internet of Things is useful for initiatives like people counting, where we have software deployed that looks through our cameras and counts the number of people that walk by. This creates data that we can present to the Chamber of Commerce, people who are interested in starting a business in Manly and people who run big events in Manly like the Hurley Australian Open,” he said.

“We feel we’ve really only scratched the surface with this sort of technology and there’s a lot of opportunity to come. Cloud based technologies like Azure Machine Learning let a smaller council like Manly get access to high end computing resources, and the outcome of research and development without having to invest a lot up front. It really enables us to ‘play with the big boys’.

Importantly, local businesses are very supportive of the initiative. Darren Younger, Founder of TechBeach in Manly, said “it is great to see Council working to bring positive change to their community through adopting this type of technology. They are obviously a very innovative organisation and are showing strong leadership in adopting this new technology”.

As an established Technology Business in Manly, Sydney North Computers have also been supportive of the initiative.  Company Director Christian Lemoy said “it is really good to see the local Council using the latest technologies to create innovative solutions that will help the local economy. It helps boost Manly’s reputation as a smart city where tech start-ups are welcome and that’s great for business”.

Mr Rogers said he was surprised at the speed to which people from Council “who aren’t necessarily programmers” had become adept at using the Azure Machine Learning technology, “because image passing and processing recognitions is normally very specialised and requires proprietary software”.

And, in keeping with its title as the birthplace of surfing in Australia, the IT team believes it is possible to utilise Azure Machine Learning to predict the surf conditions, possibly even a number of days ahead.  Another feature that the community is certain to enjoy!

Lee Hickin, IoT, Business Group Lead, Microsoft Australia said Manly Council’s experience was typical of some of the innovations that were being enabled through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“This is just the beginning of the massive impact that the Internet of Things is going to usher in and a great example of the innovation possible,” he said. “As Manly Council has shown, the possibilities that flow from leveraging Azure Machine Learning and data from existing ‘things’ are transformational and limited only by your imagination.”

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help people and businesses realise their full potential. More information can be found at: www.microsoft.com.au

To arrange to interview spokespeople from Manly Council or Microsoft contact:

Roxy Sinclair

[email protected]

02 8281 3844/0403 727 107

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