The Santander local government has invested in a wide range of technological solutions to respond to the need to control occupancy levels in bathing areas during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the most noteworthy of these was the installation of people-counting sensors at access points to beaches, which are able to keep track of how many people are on the beaches at all times.
These sensors use 3D vision technology, which allows them to differentiate between children and adults based on their height and also filter out small objects. The devices installed do not capture images; they simple count the people who enter and leave via each entry point and send this information in real time to the Santander Smart City platform via 3G and 4G connections and the APIs it provides, so the data can be added to the city's data repository.
Through the people counts registered and the characteristics of each beach, this smart platform is able to dynamically determine the occupancy level of each one. To achieve this, it uses the maximum surface areas of each beach based on sea levels, ratios of square metres to people and the regulations to reduce maximum occupancy levels which must be applied at different phases of the pandemic. It's worth noting that the maximum surface areas of each beach were estimated using flood predictions for different tide coefficients at the beaches, obtained from plane measurements taken using drones.
The Santander Smart City platform also stores information predicting weather patterns, tides, sea conditions, images from webcams and rescue service and life guard information (flags, alerts, etc.), which residents can check along with the level of occupancy at each beach on the website playas.santander.es.
To provide better information for residents and visitors, LED displays, LCD screens and traffic lights have also been installed, to display the current level of occupancy at the beaches. The traffic lights use the same colour code as the website: low occupancy (green), medium occupancy (yellow), high occupancy (red) or full (black).