One of the biggest concerns during the current pandemic has been overcrowding – in public transport, in malls or at the beach. Bumbee Labs, one of Urban ICT Arena’s partners, provides analytics and predictions on crowd data by capturing anonymous Wi-Fi signals in smart mobile phones. The crowd insights can be applied both in outdoor and indoor environments. This year, their products has seen a surge in interest.

Karl Samuelsson, CEO at Bumbee Labs, explains how their offerings has expanded during the year.

– We have developed a special feature to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 called “Crowd Alert System”. This allows the customer to get real-time information if there are too many people entering a specific area.

Used in airports, public transport, and train stations
In Sweden, the system has been used mostly at tourist attractions and beaches, but in countries with a stricter lockdown, it is also being used at retail shops, transport hubs and city centers. The company has also seen an increased interest from public transport operators, airports, and train stations owners.

– Some customers are very focused on avoiding overcrowding, but our technology has also been useful for measuring how big the drop in visitors were during the pandemic, and when people are starting to come back.

The future of data collection in our cities
The data collection and data cleaning are made completely anonymously, and the AI model and method is unique in its kind to have an approval from the Swedish Data Inspection Authorities with GDPR taken into account.

Karl Samuelsson sees a clear shift in the market moving forward.

– Physical retail needs better data to be able to compete with e-commerce, city centers need to know if the measures they are taking to bring visitors back are working and the public transport industry needs to make sure that their passengers are safe.

Bumbee Labs is a partner to Urban ICT Arena. To read more about their products, visit their website.