Think of it as a benign Big Brother. New York City is testing a new application that analyzes video streams of the city’s streets to glean data about pedestrian traffic patterns. Data showing the flow of people can offer several advantages, say city planning officials, from helping small businesses scout new locations to enabling the sanitation department to anticipate demand for trash pick-ups. 

"Our goal is to build a real-time data layer about what is happening in the physical world, where people are, by analyzing existing video feeds and using computer vision algorithms on them," said Alexandre Winter, CEO and founder of Placemeter, the company that is providing the pedestrian data to the city.

According to Lindsay Mollineaux, a quantitative analyst with the city’s Office of Data Analytics, "We had great city data on business conditions and demographics, but the one thing we really wanted were really granular, neighborhood pedestrian foot-traffic patterns." The city currently uses the pedestrian traffic data primarily to aid those interested in opening small business to determine the most promising location.

But there are many other potential applications. "The Department of Sanitation has expressed interest in exploring further," said Nick O’Brien, chief of staff of the Office of Data Analytics.

"If they know there’s going to be more activity in an area they can be sure to get somebody out there to clear the trash bins so they don’t overflow." […]