Las Vegas sees ‘smart park’ benefits – from pickleball to public safety

Las Vegas is demonstrating how a data-driven approach can improve the safety and management of parks in a cost and resource-efficient manner.

“The ‘smart parks’ initiative in Las Vegas is delivering benefits for the entire community and this is just the beginning,” said the city’s Chief Innovation Officer Michael Sherwood, speaking at the recent Cities Today Institute City Leadership Forum in Las Vegas. He cited examples related to data-driven operations and public safety improvements.

Smart parks are part of a broader initiative with technology company NTT, which includes deploying cameras and IoT technology to manage transportation issues such as wrong-way driving and congestion. Las Vegas was one of the first cities to use smart city technology in parks.

Following a trial at two locations in the innovation district, more parks were then equipped with sensors.

“City personnel can’t be everywhere, 24 hours a day,” said Sherwood. “We started looking at how we could use technology to make our community safer, increase operational efficiency and specifically decided to start with parks.”

The parks are fitted with optical sensors and AI analytics, as well as lidar (light detection and ranging) and acoustic sensors. These tools detect activity in the parks when they are closed – for example when someone is climbing on a statue or railing – and send alerts to the staff.

Supported by real-time data, the plan is to have civilian operators track between five and ten parks simultaneously. This model allows officers to focus on community priorities versus dedicating resources to patrolling in each park. The operators can communicate with people in the parks via speakers and automated dispatch instructions can be sent to first responders. The sensors also provide situational awareness to officers before they arrive on the scene, increasing officer safety.

“We are improving our parks and creating safer communities” said Sherwood. “In the parks where we’ve installed the system, we are seeing results and we plan to continue the deployment of these systems.”

Park usage

In addition to the advantages for the public safety department, the parks team also sees benefits and the cost of the technology can be shared across operating departments. Park staff can use the sensors to conduct remote visual patrols to address issues such as graffiti and litter much faster. The sensors also provide information related to how many people visit the park and when, how they use the facilities and how long they stay.

Ashwini Chharia, Senior Director for NTT Smart World Solutions, NTT DATA, commented: “The parks department is interested in understanding what the usage patterns are, and it is not just about the patterns but also understanding what the situation is likely to be over the course of the day.”

Over time, the data that’s been collected is used to predict daily park usage and provide information back to the park. This data in turn helps plan, operate and maintain a range of activities, from cleaning schedules to investment decisions.

Sherwood gave a timely example related to pickleball, which is a fast-growing sport in the U.S.

“Some basketball courts seem to be going down in usage,” he explained. “As they come up for resurfacing or other renewal work, we can review the data and add relevant services for the community.”

“Maybe, five years from now, we’ll be able to show that we put pickleball courts in and park usage went up 40 percent,” Sherwood said, noting that data and analytics work for the betterment of communities.

Chharia added: “It isn’t about using technology for the sake of it. We talk to each persona to see what sort of information they value.”

Each user – whether they’re public safety, park management or traffic-focused – gets a data dashboard tailored to their needs, he said.

Drones

In the future, the city plans to gather more data using drones and air quality sensors. Drones will fly over parks and other areas at periodic intervals on pre-determined paths. The county and others are interested in air quality data, and the infrastructure that is already in place makes adding environmental sensors easy.

“One, seeing a drone flying deters crime. Two, it gives us additional information and datasets,” said Sherwood.

“We own all the data that is produced by the system. As we get accuracy and prove the use cases, we publish these datasets to the public,” he added.

Sherwood emphasised that this is part of the city’s commitment to transparency and added that data retention policies have been put in place. This means that videos are only stored for 30 days, unless they’re related to criminal activity. However, metadata on counts over time, which tracks trends, is retained on an ongoing basis.

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