The number of daily passenger vehicle trips has hit a major milestone, reaching pre-pandemic levels for the first time in a year as some countries are rebounding after fully vaccinating their citizens. How to alleviate the traffic congestion? Find out here.

The rollout of Covid-19 vaccines have brought hope towards a rebound in some countries. Countries with the highest vaccination rate are headed to coverage and eventually returning to normalcy. In high-vaccination-rate countries, fully vaccinated people can now safely engage in outdoor activities and resume the activities they had stopped because of the pandemic.

As some countries with high vaccination rates are planning to embark on the path of reopening, an article published by the Work Research Group at Vanderbilt predicts a sweeping switch to a single-occupancy vehicle commuting that leads to extreme traffic in large metropolitan areas. The increasing traffic counts are likely to continue their upward trend in late August as many students will be returning to school for the first time since march 2020.&nbsp;

While the rise in traffic vehicles is approaching pre-pandemic levels, traffic management plays an important role in this case. Traffic monitoring through image processing techniques can lead to better control of the flow since manual traffic monitoring is no longer adequate to keep a good standard of mobility. Hence, for an effective traffic management, vehicle classification and vehicle counting are the key modules that serve as a base for almost all the use cases built for traffic analysis.

Qlue.ai provides solutions that can optimize traffic flow with vehicle detection and recognition. Our vehicle classification is able to detect, count, and classify vehicles up to four categories: motorcycle, car, truck, and bus in single counting line. All of the data can be streamed in real time for a quicker response to traffic conditions. With our vehicle counting feature that has the ability to estimate the density of the road, it allows the transportation authority to formulate new operational policies for a better and more convenient traffic flow. Therefore, the traffic congestion spots would eventually be reduced as well as the cost and pollution.

While the increase in traffic volumes may show a good sign of returning to a normal life, we can’t take our attention away from how the problems before the pandemic may also reappear. It may seem like a never-ending problem, but with Qlue.ai solutions, there’s always a way to solve the problems.

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The number of daily passenger vehicle trips has hit a major milestone, reaching pre-pandemic levels. How to alleviate the traffic congestion? Find out here.

Arranging Traffic Flow Towards the Normalcy

The emergence of COVID-19 variant of concern that is more contagious and resistant to current vaccines than the original one has caused a big spike in some countries, forcing the government to reimplement social restrictions to avoid people engaging in risky behaviors after vaccination.

The coronaviruses that constantly change through mutation are becoming more diverse. Some of the new variants allow the virus to spread more easily and cause COVID-19 spike in some countries. WHO (World Health Organization) had declared that delta, the variant first identified in India, is a variant of concern for its significantly increased transmissibility. According to studies, the delta variant is 60% more transmissible than alpha, the variant first identified in the U.K that is more contagious than the original variant from Wuhan, China. Other than just being more contagious, the delta variant also causes more severe symptoms and is more resistant to current vaccines and treatments.&nbsp;

Some of the countries in Europe, US, and Asia have reported the COVID-19 spike due to the spread of the new variant, such as Omicron. Not only the cases are increasing because of the new variant, according to Paul Hunter, a professor of health protection at the University of East Anglia who reviewed the Israeli data, there have been concerns that people may believe they are protected after they have had their first vaccine injection and start engaging to risky behavior more than previously. While the scientists are still studying the impact of delta variants on the efficacy of Covid vaccines, we should not lower the guard.

The increased cases have forced the governments to reimplement social restriction in a large scale or even lockdown restriction. But, it would take a lot of adjustment all over again since we already have passed that phase for quite some time. In that case, how effective will the restriction be?&nbsp;

Qlue has adjusted the computer vision ability to detect and distinguish people who wear and don’t wear masks through CCTV with 98% accuracy. Afterward, the Internet of Things (IoT) will allow the CCTV to send a notification to the nearest officer. This allows the government to do a quick response-handling towards the people who are doing risky behavior.

Other than not wearing a mask, being in a crowd is also considered as risky behavior for it makes it hard for the people who are in it to have a safe space between each other. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), staying at least 6 feet away from other people can help to slow the spread of COVID-19. Qlue vision solution is also capable of detecting crowds for it has the ability to count people and analyze real-time foot traffic. With the wider visibility that is also integrated with a dashboard to analyze people traffic or the information of the number of people who pass a certain area, the government can implement the social restriction effectively for it avoids the people from making a crowd.

It would take a lot of adjustment all over again since we already have passed that phase for quite some time. Read more!

Post-vaccination Risky Behavior leading to COVID-19 Spike

In response to Covid-19 pandemic, the government implemented a variety of mitigation policies to minimize the spread of virus and focus on reducing the contacts between individuals such as work from home, social distancing, and closing non-essential businesses. Apparently, these types of policies have spawned drastic changes in the behaviors of citizens and economic activity in all regions across the world. The changes are affecting all aspects of life, with crime being no exception. The closure of businesses and subsequent unemployment and loss of income may be one of the factors.

According to the FBI, car thefts and break-ins have been on the rise with a 6% climb between January and June 2020, compared to the same time in 2019. Moreover, Los Angeles, Denver, and Scarsdale, New York have broken records for the number of cars stolen in 2020. “Being anonymized has always been associated with more deviant and criminal behavior,” said Bryanna Fox, a former FBI Agent and associate professor in the University of South Florida’s criminology department. In this case, criminals are taking advantage of the mask usage situation - as exemplified by the spikes in car thefts and break-ins. According to Fox, studies also found “people who wear masks feel more enabled and empowered to do things that they normally wouldn’t have done if their face was seen in public.”

The ongoing changes in Covid-19 cases force some companies to adjust and readjust their policies including the implementation of work from home or sometimes hybrid work. With the social distance going on and limited people in a building, it enhances the possibility for work alone conditions in the office which is typically associated with workplace violence and intruder.&nbsp;

It is safe to say that the pandemic has brought an additional dimension to the office security issues since the policies itself are facilitating the possibilities of crime such as in mask usage that can be used for face concealment on CCTV, economic pressure, and the emergence of quiet places due to social distancing.

As a preventive measure, Qlue.AI Solutions provides intrusion detection to improve the safety and security standards. By leveraging AI and IoT, this solution can detect illegal intrusion, send notification of the event, and record the intrusion event. When the unknown person entered restricted areas in the office or does some suspicious behavior, Qlue.AI Solutions automatically sends notification to the security personnel allowing them to react at the right time.&nbsp;

During pandemics, the workplace can be vulnerable to violence or intruder but having Qlue.AI Solutions in place to prevent, prepare and react earlier is the best way to keep a place safe.

Crime thrives during times of social and economic unrest, and the Covid-19 pandemic did not stop that. In limited circumstances, how to optimize the prevention?

Safe Place during Pandemic

According to the worldometer, more than 39 million cars are being produced and still counting in 2021. It is also estimated that over 1 billion passenger cars travel the streets and roads of the world today. The number of car sales are also increasing due to the new normal phase. John Kiser from the US market research even believes that Covid-19 has the potential to fuel a comeback of cars since people prefer to own cars for safety, protection, and control during a pandemic. Following the rapid growth of car ownership, the fact is that there is no private vehicle that is perpetually in motion. Most of the private vehicles spend most of their time at rest especially during working hours at a parking lot.

Parking problems in cities are becoming more important and have been one of the most discussed topics by both the general public and professionals. This problem occurs when the parking supply and the parking demand are imbalanced due to the large number of vehicle drivers. The inadequate parking space eventually forces the vehicle owner to park illegally and primarily proliferate the problem.&nbsp;

Illegal parking plays a key role in the metropolitan traffic system for it can be a cause for traffic congestion. The increasing supply of off-street parking areas eat away the road space, causing not only traffic congestion, but also air &amp; noise pollution, and reduce ease of movement in and around the city. It is clear that urgent solution is needed to tackle the spiral problem.

Qlue.AI Solution are equipped with AI computer vision to efficiently detect and take a snapshot of the violator’s license plate number. Moreover, Qlue.AI Solution is able to send the report of the parking violation to the authorities with IoT. Other than that, the voice guard also enables to give warning through speaker and alert nearby officers or command center. With the data analytics provided through an integrated dashboard, it also helps to formulate new policies to make better and more convenient vehicle flows.&nbsp;

By leveraging computer vision to detect illegal parking in streets, vehicle drivers could be less ignorant and more disciplined. Although it may seem like a trivial problem, tackling the illegal parking helps prevent other traffic problems. The fewer vehicles being parked illegally, especially in narrow streets, reduces the traffic congestion. More than that, less traffic jams will save more cost and reduce the pollution as well.

Shortage of parking space due to the rapid increase of car ownership leads to illegal parking that convolutes the congestion. Find out how to curb the problem.

Tackling Traffic Spiral Problem

The government keeps promoting the vaccination program, and currently has entered the second round which is aimed for the public servant and elderly. Ironically, the execution was frequently conducted without implementing the COVID-19 protocols.

The vaccine program was being encouraged in order to create so-called herd immunity amongst society. The first wave was successfully done to medical personnel who fight the pandemic in the front line.

After successfully round one of vaccination, the second was held quite differently since it was targeted at more participants. The ironic thing is that the implementation of vaccines sometimes creates a crowd of people. Reports indicate that crowding occurred caused by a long queue. Even so, one of the health protocols is asking people to avoid crowds.

The minimum number of field officers is often considered as the scapegoat of the crowding. They are accused of being negligent in duty and not strict with health protocols in avoiding crowd participants. The preparation and implementation of standard operating procedures for field offices during the process also get into the spotlight.&nbsp;

On that occasion, one effective way to avoid crowds is to take advantage of technology. Qlue provides QlueVision which can detect human faces accurately. With IoT technology, QlueVision also able to detect once there is a crowding in a location.&nbsp;

After being detected with QlueVision, our solution called QlueSense is also able to assist the authorities to give a voice warning to the crowding spots. The warning deployed from our solution also can be adjusted depending on the real-time situation, and the warning is customizable as well.&nbsp;

The voice warning can be effective as a warning system in preventing a crowd. People who get into the crowd will feel the presence of the authorities, so they will encourage themselves to follow the health protocol. Likewise, all the vaccine participants and the vaccine officers who would enter the vaccination area can have their body temperature checked by QlueThermal. The other solution from Qlue, besides detecting body temperature and mask usage, is able to count people in order to analyze the building occupancy.&nbsp;

The involvement of technology became essential amidst this COVID-19 pandemic. We can minimize the virus transmission which may occur by physical contact. Redundant work from your officers will be minimized by technology. And most importantly, these solutions will allow you to have more efficient in-ground personnel and provide you with real-time data to mitigate the next step decision.

The vaccination program has entered the second wave but ironically conducted without implementing the COVID-19 protocols. Read here!

Smoothen Out Vaccination with The Involvement of Technology

Have you ever imagined the new normal at your office? Every limitation shall be implemented, but its monitoring will be the other challenge. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, now the monitoring and surveillance system will be much more seamless in order to put COVID-19 outbreak into its minimum. Read more

Overseeing the employee during their activity at the office amidst pandemic COVID-19 would be a new challenge for most companies. Particularly, big corporations which employ hundreds or thousands of employees. Work-shifting is only one out of many possibilities by its management to reduce the crowd. But it’s not sufficiently reduce the concern regarding virus transmission.

Earlier this year, governments around the world have loosen up their regulations, allowing employees to work from office with certain protocols. Slowly but sure, business began to run and economic wheels started spinning. Concerns over catching and spreading the coronavirus mean that roughly 40% of workers able to work from home likely will continue to do so. 

Work that requires physical interactions however; such as construction, retail, food service, entertainment, sports, medical care, education, and salons will require significant changes to the physical environment and individual behaviors. The virus may not affect people with a good immune system. But the virus is still able to transmit to others who disobey the health protocols. The management certainly expects their employees would have a high awareness for the protocols, but never alienate any possibility of protocol violation inadvertently. 

While physical distancing, wearing masks, washing hands, and cleaning up surfaces make those workplaces safer, limiting the spread of the virus depends on identifying and disrupting systems of connections. It will require mapping out transmission networks and breaking key links in those networks, a strategy quite similar to the one the intelligence community has long used to break up illegal networks. This can be done with the use of technology, especially AI surveillance systems.

Now surveillance systems play a more integral role in mitigating any possibilities of COVID-19 outbreak at office spaces. By utilizing AI, surveillance systems provided by Qlue can now serve office space for non-physical attendance checking, detecting mask usage, contact tracing, and other surveillance purposes. With tireless monitoring, the surveillance system will make sure each employee complies with the health protocols. 

Not only monitoring, the system can be integrated with a workforce management mobile app, automatically sending alerts to nearby security officers or stakeholders if a person is detected violating the health protocols. The app can also function as a task management tool, where leaders can organise tasking and measure the performances of on-field workers. All of the recorded data such as timestamps, mask usage, violations, and detected faces will be gathered to a single dashboard in real-time where business leaders can get comprehensive insights and make better decisions.

Employees’ safety will need to be prioritised in order to recover from this challenging situation. This solution has helped more than 20 office spaces across Indonesia in bouncing back from the business decline due to the pandemic.

Have you ever imagined the new normal at your office? Every limitation shall be implemented, but its monitoring will be the other challenge. Read more.

Work from Office VS Compliance to COVID-19 Health Protocols

It is common to see banks have a huge network of ATMs where they are located all over a region or even in a remote area. The safety and security of each ATM is very important yet there might be an unequal level amongst them. Chances are low for ATMs downtown to be criminally attacked if compared to the ones in suburbs.

Tackling that issue, an AI-based technology has started to gain its recognition. Not only for securing safety, AI has been also performing some other benefits such as predicting the possibility of maintenance for an ATM, enhancing ATM cameras with computer vision, improving customer experience, and forecasting the cash demand, as reported by Emerj.

This article will focus on the implementation of AI to enhance security in particular with the help of computer vision. Computer vision can perform as a complementary role for identification. It can be paired with another authentication key to serve the customers a two-factor authentication.

The risk of illegal activities committed in financial services are lowered by offering identity authentication powered by computer vision. Using facial recognition as its finest offer, ATMs which are powered by computer vision can avoid the possibility of someone misusing a card that does not belong to him or her. In other words, ATMs can deny the user’s access to the account she or he is trying to get into.&nbsp;

Back in 2019, Indonesia was startled by the phenomenon of ATM skimming as CNN Indonesia reported. ATM skimming can be defined as an act of stealing credit or debit card information by illegally copying the information contained on the magnetic stripe of a credit or debit card. It is also reported that the crime can be performed both internally or externally.

When skimming is done internally, it is most likely because there is a leak in the banking database and the leak is so massive. Meanwhile, when skimming is done externally, it occurs at an ATM or an EDC machine accompanied by a pin peeping camera. After that, the cards are being cloned to carry out the whole skimming violation.

Even worse, it was also reported that the violators installed a keypad-like camera so that they could record what the user’s pin is. Accordingly, users would never realize that they are being recorded when typing in their PIN. In this case, a two-factor authentication becomes necessarily critical.

Equipping an ATM with a computer vision feature is probably one of the most pinpointing and most efficient ways to prevent skimming to keep happening. Not only computer vision can analyze the user’s facial features thoroughly to give permission to the transaction, it can also crosscheck the analyzed features to the existing database the banks have.

Other than that, computer vision is also very helpful in recognizing blacklisted faces from a data set, allowing nearby security officers to be notified and take action towards it. This will simplify the security initiatives while making it more reliable and accurate.

Fulfilling the need of banking and financial industries to provide a safe transaction for their customers, Qlue has the answer to this certain problem by launching QlueVision. QlueVision works with any IP-Camera (CCTV, smartphone, webcam) which suits every ATM machine. It can definitely run a facial recognition for a two-factor authentication, a complementary yet critical role when doing a transaction.

Additionally, QlueVision is equipped with QlueDashboard which makes it easier to cross-check data. ATMs can automatically analyze the data QlueVision has just captured to their database. If the face matches the database, the transaction succeeds. Hence, the possibility of customers losing their money is lower than ever.&nbsp;

ATMs are one of the places most prone to crime. However, implementing AI can at least reduce the risk of this happening. Find out more.

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