Counting cars in remote National Parks

The National Parks are custodians of the countryside, but their popularity is harming wildlife. On fine days some of their car parks are full by mid-morning and people arriving later park on nearby verges and in front of gateways. This is a problem as they block access for emergency vehicles down the road and damage vegetation in the park. Many wild flowers line the verges, providing pollinators and insects with food, shelter and places to breed. Later in the year birds and small mammals feed on the seeds.

To help solve this problem, national parks are using vehicle counting systems from Retail Sensing.

Every five minutes the system sends reports over long range radio waves (LoRaWAN) on the numbers of cars currently parking by the side of the road. This lets the park deploy rangers to move them on.

How it Works

The car parking sensing comprises overhead cameras connected to counting units which detect and record parked cars. Bandwidth use is minimised as the information is processed locally.

LoRaWan wirelessly connects our counters to the Internet-of-Things. As it is long range, in conjunction with solar power we can install vehicle monitoring systems in very remote areas.

Park authorities view the vehicle counts on their browsers or smart phones.

The system easily counts outdoors, even in bright or very gloomy weather.

For more information about very remote monitoring please get in touch. E-mail: sales@retailsensing.com or call +44 (0)161 839 6437.

Photo credit: Mr M Evison / Welcome To Brecon Beacons National Park / CC BY-SA 2.0