Data trailer

The data trailer can be deployed quickly for short periods to produce counting, movement and categorisation data in specific or multiple locations as an alternative to permanent installations of sensors and devices.

Category	Bringing data to life
Location	Region wide
Project status	Operational
Start date	November 2023
Completion date	Ongoing
Cost	$60,000+

Benefits / value

Deploy equipment quickly
Cost effective
High levels of accuracy
Data is available to all staff

Introduction

The initial pilot and testing of a data acquisition trailer for internal council use identified the need for a custom-built trailer to meet branch needs for high quality and accurate data.

With an increasing demand for data insights, the recently constructed trailer is available for council use to help inform capital works projects and funding applications. 

You can visit our Trailer locations page to view previous, current, and planned locations.

Challenge

Faced with increasingly tight budgets, council branches need to demonstrate the need for capital works to meet current and future community needs.

Council often accesses grant funding from other levels of government, which require increasingly accurate data that supports these funding requests.

The installation of permanent data equipment typically requires higher costs and maintenance. An alternative solution is to identify how to:

provide a faster response and access to data acquisition services that are tailored to specific council branch needs.
reduce the cost of acquiring data instead of installing permanent sensors and devices.
provide a responsive service to meet emerging requests from council branches.

Solution

Deploy temporary data analytics cameras and a WiFi probe using edge processing to produce analytics and movement data showing:

number of vehicles and pedestrians in defined areas
types, eg pedestrian, car, truck etc  
direction of pedestrian/vehicle travel 
desire lines: where people move through an area, where vehicles drive  
dwell times: where do people gather and for how long.

To ensure privacy, no personally identifiable information is collected, eg no face recognition or number plate recognition.

The mobile solar-powered trailer has a telescopic mast initially fitted with the following equipment: 

Environmental sensors

ambient temperature sensor 
weather station - wind speed and direction, temperature and humidity, air pressure
environmental monitoring station
- air quality: dust, smoke, pollen
- gases: ozone, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide

Counting and movement categorisation

2 data analytics cameras
1 WiFi probe counter

Connectivity

Internet of Things (IoT) gateway - provides zero cost internet connectivity for installed sensors and devices.

Equipment can be added or changed to meet council’s future data acquisition requirements.

Outcomes

The mobile data trailer offers an alternative option to installing permanent sensors and devices in council priority locations and:

provides accurate short-term data to establish a baseline for pre, during and post activities, including: construction sites, events, WH&S, evaluation of future Internet of Things (IoT) gateway deployments.  
substantially reduces the cost to branches to acquire high quality data.  
means information gathered over several days or a week can be extrapolated out to the total year, saving branches significantly and giving them access to accurate information. 
supports budget requests, and measures improvements.