Sensors tracking footfall, road temperature and drug use could be installed in ‘smart’ Wrexham

Wrexham could become a ‘smart’ city with a mesh of sensors reporting live information and data on noise levels to marijuana use and everything inbetween. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

Much of the information will be familiar to councillors attending, however it will give them a dedicated session to scrutinise plans and create their own recommendations on the SMART Town Project.

Councillors are told that in Wrexham, the SMART Towns Project is aligned with the delivery of the emerging Placemaking Plan, where it will “deliver insight into the before, during and after phases of the work”. The Council has been able to employ a SMART Towns Development Officer for 3 years using grant income to explore the opportunities and progress the approach. The Council has also received a Digital Plan, at no cost, through the Year of the SMART Towns project. This has been developed by consultants appointed by Menter Môn, to help benchmark Councils and provide options for future consideration.

They are also updated on plans to secure additional footfall counter along with new LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Angled Network) Gateways and sensors. An application has been submitted to Welsh Government for grant support in this regard with an outcome expected later this month.

8 modern Cisco Meraki footfall sensors have been supplied by Welsh Government with a 10 year licence and these have been installed from library carpark walkway, Lambpit Street, Queen Street, Hope Street (three locations), High Street and Chester Street. The last units were connected in November 2022. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

The council say the Meraki units are low in terms of energy consumption with the annual running cost estimated at approximately £25.50 per device. No public data or live endpoints have been published as of yet to broadcast what they are seeing.

LoRaWAN is described as a network which a receiver (Gateway) can receive up to 7000 sensors. The sensors transmit a radio signal similar to an analogue TV aerial. The signal can be transmitted a considerable distance up to 3 km when signal strength is sufficient. The data is then released from the gateway to “The Things Network” before being collected onto a dashboard platform to view and store the data. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

A selection of use cases for different sensor sets are given in documents before councillors, including:

• Digital Screens across the city can promote both night time and day time economies more effectively, keeping up to date with current activities.
• Footfall and dwell-time data can be used to support businesses and encourage new start-ups. As trends start to emerge, data can be gathered on successful businesses and can determine a “what works” approach for the city centre.
• Data on traffic movements, footfall, spend can all support the planning and distribution of housing developments. Technologies can also be deployed within developments to support assisted living or around developments to monitor anti-social behaviour or flood risk.
• Car park sensors to give an informed decision making on managing Council owned car parks to enhance freely available parking spaces, disabled parking. Traffic sensors can track the volume of traffic entering the city from main access points, which then can be used to make decisions on the improvement of infrastructure and the promotion of active travel.
• CO2/Air quality sensors to gain real time data which can be used to improve the carbon reduction of the city. These can be outdoor for busy traffic routes and indoor for spaces involving gatherings of groups of people to promote a cleaner environment.
• Sound sensors could be deployed to tackle anti-social behaviour as well as marijuana sensors to deter recreational drugs around the city, installing confidence in visitors, to make the city more attractive and saving police time.

The issue of who owns the data, who gets to access it and if that is possible to be as ‘live’ as possible is likely to be raised, with the report advising councillors, “Central to the approach is the understanding that the data needs to shared to be of any value. This could be within the Council, within the business sector and with visitors and users of the City Centre.”

“A Dashboard is required to pull all of the data sources and data sets together and present them in a logical, user friendly manner. Other Local Authorities are using a platform named Tago. This is a cloud based dashboard solution which enables some parts of the data to be viewed for business / public use”. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

In terms of ownership it notes, “An ambition of the project is to “open source” as much of the data as possible to the independent business sector in Wrexham, that would otherwise not have access to such information and would be unable to do size and cost to source the information in the way that large multiples and national / international brands already do.”

As we previously reported the ‘opendata’ buzzword has been used many times by Wrexham Council, with the concept of opening up information from the council emerging in different ways such as how to store and view historic council meetings, and the scrapping of detailed spending by the authority. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

Back in 2017 the council itself noted the ‘vast array’ of data it held, stating it would “follow the principles of “open data” and “data transparency” making more public data available on-line” – it does not appear that has happened, with that corporate council strategy covering 2017-2020. The replacement ICT & Digital Strategy covering 2020-2023 does not contain the words ‘open data’ nor ‘transparency’, and the overall council plan does not repeat the policy.

The evergreen topic of an ‘app’ to “enhance the marketing of businesses, events and community alike” is also set to be discussed with the new data sets being a possible element of it. As readers will recall back in 2014 the same committee reviewed the performance of the WrexhamSaysHello / Hello World app, which saw 1,472 downloads in ten months, and cost £12,000 to develop back with a five figure promotional campaign. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

The WrexhamSaysHello twitter account appears still owned by Wrexham council and has nearly 8,000 followers – and is dormant.

Councillors appear to be told it is too late to find out what went right, and wrong, with that exercise, “The idea of apps and social media pages was an initial part of the Council’s Hello Wrexham Hello World campaign but this has not been operational for some time meaning there is no relevant / timely data that can be reported. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

“Consideration of whether the development of a new app is led / hosted by the Council, or sits with an external body representing the business sector, such as the potential Business Investment District company, will be the outcome of the ongoing feasibility exercise.” ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

City centre Wifi that was much trailed but never quite got going despite a hefty price tag and lots of work also gets revisited, with an implication the recent City of Culture bid was negatively impacted due to that not bearing fruit, “We know from the City of Culture judges’ visit and subsequent feedback that WIFI and mobile connectivity is an important consideration in creating a successful host venue, as visitors and participants will benefit from the ability to access information and communication.” ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

Councillors will get to probe the report, and gather more information on ideas such as air quality sensors in all council buildings or carbon sensors around the city at the Employment, Business and Investment Scrutiny Committee will meet on Tuesday, 10th January at 4.00 pm. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

Due to being a smartish council, you will be able to watch the meeting online and possibly listen depending if the audio issues are sorted.

Top pic: An example CO2 sensor dashboard output.