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Drones to do the headcount in Dubai soon

Dubai - Dubai Statistics Centre developing software to count everything from people to trees to buildings

The number of people in a crowd, homes, trees, pets, cars and parking slots are some of the many things that will be measured in Dubai with a drone that has been introduced by the Dubai Statistics Centre (DSC).
The centre has already launched a pilot phase, where the drone has been able to collect data in certain areas of the emirate.
The project is being implemented to help in producing accurate and instant data with the use of artificial intelligence.
"We have launched a pilot test of statistical services through drones in limited areas, in rural areas and suburban areas," said Loay Mahmoud, the senior specialist at the DSC.
"We are in the process of developing a software that can recognise buildings, trees, humans, cars and many things. We have counted the buildings, trees, car parking spots and the number of cars in some areas."
Mahmoud said the drone will help specially in large scale events that happen in Dubai throughout the year, as it will be able to measure exactly how many people attended a certain event.
"We are developing the software to count the number of people in a crowd. For New Year's Eve, for example, we can easily fly the drone in the Burj Khalifa area and we can count how many people are there. It can give an instant count and the accuracy level is 99 per cent.
"So far, we have an accuracy level of 75 per cent to 90 per cent, but that's not acceptable for us. We are developing an algorithm-based software with artificial intelligence. The ultimate goal is to have multiple data sources such as crowd movement and density in certain areas. 
The drone uses the help of artificial intelligence to recognise shapes of objects and humans. Thousands of different kinds of images and shapes can be programmed into its system, helping it recognise certain shapes.
"This is called machine learning. It can easily count the number of people. In the darkness, it can easily capture how many people attended," he said.
Mahmoud has ensured that there will be no privacy breaches because of the drone and that privacy of each individual is "respected". 
"We don't break the privacy of people. We have standards for that. One of our mandates is to avoid leakage of any private information of our customers. We don't store the images. The machine just gathers and reads the numbers and feeds it to us," he said.
sarwat@khaleejtimes.com