Shopping centresMobility analysis
CAM-540
How many get out of the car and which door they end up using
Shopping Saturday, midday light. On the left, rows of cars in the surface car park; in the foreground, a car with its door open and a family getting out. A group crosses at the pedestrian crossing and carries on across the forecourt towards the main entrance, glazed, on the right. Another family walks back to the car with bags. IRIS counts how many people cross, how many go in through the door and how many cars use the lane. All in aggregate: no number plates are read here.
Turn on IRIS Vision
AI-generated image
What IRIS is
IRIS keeps an eye on the mall for you.
IRIS is an artificial intelligence that looks at the cameras you already have and understands what's happening in the aisles, queues and stores. When a queue grows long, an area fills up, or something you want to track happens, it alerts you; and whatever can be counted, it counts in numbers. All day long, without anyone having to stare at a screen.
You tell it what you need to watch, and IRIS does it.
Here, for instance, IRIS counts how many people cross over from the car park and which door they end up using. That tells you the ratio between cars arriving and people actually coming into the centre. With that number you decide whether to open another crossing or reinforce a door, then check next month if it improved.
Works with the cameras you already have. Nothing to replace.
A person replies, not a form.
- Your footage never leaves your premises.
- It doesn't identify people.
- Certifications →
What IRIS understands
What it recognises in this scene
- main entrance
- pedestrians crossing the forecourt
- pedestrian crossing
- car with a family getting out
- parked cars
- traffic lane
- family walking back to the car with bags
What this camera gives back
Nobody gets an alert here. Here you get numbers.
- 520 / hPeople per hour going in through the door
- 390 / h+70People per hour using the crossing
- 2,4People per arriving car
- 215 / hCars per hour coming in
- 17:00 – 18:00Busiest hour for arrivals
- 17:35Last updated
The figures on this screen are an example from the illustration, not any client's measurement.
How the counting works
Counting is not something you ask for. You draw a line.
There is a line at the pedestrian crossing and another on the door threshold, and a zone painted over the forecourt between them. Whatever crosses each line is added, with the direction it was going; the zone says how many people are in between at any moment. From that comes the ratio of arriving cars to entering people, always in aggregate. A line cannot be described in a sentence: it is traced onto the image, and that is why one Saturday's figure compares with the one before without argument.
- line on the door threshold · Counting line
- line at the pedestrian crossing · Counting line
- forecourt zone · Dwell zone
And also, one rule
You decide once. IRIS applies it always.
If
people keep crossing the lane away from the pedestrian crossing
Then
- alert the security lead with the exact point where people are crossing
- save the video of those crossings for the access review
- leave the count for that slot so you can decide whether another crossing is needed
The instruction that set it up«Tell me how many people come in through the main door for each car that arrives at the car park.»
What changes
What changes for operations, for asset management and for security
Saturday at midday, and the centre’s operations manager knows how many cars have come in but not how many people got out of them. The car park is the first part of the visit and almost always the worst measured. Knowing how many people cross, where they cross and which door they come in through explains things that today are only assumed: why one door is full and another empty, whether another crossing is needed, where to put the family bays and what time it is worth adding cleaning at the entrance. And it gives the ratio of cars to people, which is what turns a car park filling up into a forecast of the crowd inside half an hour later.
What people usually ask
Are number plates read here?
Not here. This camera is set up to count people and cars, not to read plates: the frame is wide and looks at the forecourt. What it returns are aggregate numbers — how many cars come in per hour, how many people cross, how many go in through the door — with nothing that identifies any vehicle or any visitor. IRIS can read plates on other cameras and in other places where the centre needs it and has the legal basis; this is not one of them, and we are not going to imply otherwise.
How do you know how many people each car brings?
By comparing numbers, not by following anyone. One line counts the cars entering the car park and another counts the people crossing towards the centre in the same period. Dividing one by the other gives an aggregate average. It is not a figure about one particular car or one particular family, and it cannot be: IRIS does not tie people to vehicles and recognises nobody.
Can the car park predict how busy the centre will be?
That is exactly what it is for. When the car park fills at a certain rate, half an hour later that turns into people in the malls. With the two curves laid over each other you see that centre's own relationship, which is not another centre's. And with that relationship you decide when the extra cleaning and security shift starts, instead of deciding it once things are already messy. A person reads the forecast: IRIS supplies the two curves, not the decision.
Other cameras
- CAM-535 · How many people come in through each door, and when
- CAM-536 · An empty corridor twenty metres from a packed wing
- CAM-537 · Before, during and after: what the campaign actually brought in
- CAM-538 · Eighteen hundred walk past and two hundred stop
- CAM-539 · The ground floor packed and the upper walkway deserted
- CAM-541 · The queue is not moving and there are barely any free tables left
Every simulation
Something has spilled
Tell me if there is liquid or foam outside its place and it is still there two minutes later.
- The sentence
- Where it applies
- What it finds
- The same rule
See it somewhere else
Why did the line stop?
237 cases, and in every one of them IRIS raises an alert when something happens. You see each image as it is, and then with what it understands on top.
How many bays are free right now?
15 cases: 9 raise an alert when something happens and 6 only measure. You see each image as it is, and then with what IRIS understands on top.
And the best part
The disk fills up on its own.The questions stay unanswered.
Storing images is easy, and it is not cheap. What was missing was someone to look at them. IRIS looks at everything you record and shows you only what is worth a glance.
Tell us your problem and we will say whether IRIS understands it, or not yet.
We reply the same working day.