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Smart initiatives

John Scott Park has been fitted with sensors to provide us with vital data that will help us plan and operate our parks for decades to come. These sensors record the climate, air quality, human flows, power and water usage, bin levels and barbeque usage.

Council is piloting the use of “IoT” (Internet of Things) sensors to capture better, real-life data on how the community uses parks and park assets.

Benefit to the region

To plan the best amenities, prioritise investments, design the best venues and operate them efficiently, we need to know more about how you use them. For this reason, sensors have been carefully placed around the park to collect meaningful data that can help Council answer important questions. For example:

How many people use the park?
What sections are busiest?
Should we replace amenities based on budgeted lifecycle or actual usage?
What specific barbeque or bin is most used? Which is least used? And why?
How is air quality impacted during an event like a major fire?
How does park attendance change over exceptional events? Or extreme heat? Or seasons?

Answering these questions using real-life data (rather than modelling estimates) will allow Council to design better parks, improve amenities, and ensure parks are kept clean, tidy and safe.

John Scott Park dashboard

The data used in the dashboard comes directly from a range of smart sensors located in John Scott Park. None of the information captured is personal in nature. The user is advised that the information provided in the dashboard may be incomplete or incorrect and therefore unable to be used in any specific situation. The data is for information purposes only and is subject to change without notice. No reliance or actions must therefore be made on the information without seeking prior expert professional, scientific or technical advice.

Reading the dashboard

The interactive dashboard has information about John Scott Park, including:

the busiest days
the busiest times
the average temperature throughout the day
air quality
BBQ usage
how full the bins are.

You can filter the information by different seasons, public holidays, school holidays and more.

Though the data is updated regularly, we can tell that generally:

the busiest day is usually Sunday
the busiest time is usually 10:00 AM
the highest humidity is around 5:00 AM
the hottest time of day is around 1:00 PM
BBQs are used most frequently on weekends
bins are at their most full on Sundays
air quality falls within 'good' range.

More information about the data

People counter data

To determine busy times in the park, Council uses a device called an n-counter. The device provides an estimate of the number of Wi-Fi enabled devices that enter and leave John Scott Park. The following data packet includes the date and time, a device identifier and the total number of people the n-counter detected in a defined period of time. It also calculates how long people stayed during this time, and a few other things. Importantly, it is all anonymous – it does not know whose smartphone it is, it simply knows that a smartphone was there.

Data sample:

Climate data

Council uses a number of devices to measure climate conditions. These are simple devices which assist Council in understanding the local climate conditions in John Scott Park. The following example data packet includes the date and time, a device identifier, along with temperature, humidity and battery level. These data packets are collected every fifteen minutes, and presented regularly on the dashboard.

Data sample: