Flow analysis, speed and critical points in the city of Alba
“DataFromSky”, in other words, data that arrives from the sky through the shootings of a camera placed on a balloon. It was not so difficult to see one of these during these days in the industrial area located in Corso Asti, where the local study “TrafficLab” is going to analyze the traffic from the sky. “This is an analysis that we need for planning the new commerce building placed in this area” says the municipal officer. The results are still processing. Andrea Marella, engineer at TrafficLab, says: “We realized some aerial video at a height about 50/60 meters. The results are really interesting, because it is possible to see the traffic from a different perspective.” And explains: “This is a new methodology developed about three years ago that allows to analyze the vehicle movements from the sky. This service doesn’t interference with the sensitive data, and helps to get information automatically with our software. This can give us the number of the vehicles on the road, the traffic flow, the directions, the speeds and the conflict points.”

Looking for solutions
The camera is attached to a balloon inflated with helium. Marella adds: “We cannot use drones, because it is too difficult to have authorizations. We work in this way from a long time, with motorway companies, shopping centers and traffic local authorities and the results are very satisfactory. In this way we can have a wider vision that allows to report potentially critical situations and to find out how to solve them.”