Underground counters lose track of who's visiting nature
New Zealand's Department of Conservation is seeking to replace its outdated, manual visitor-counting systems with automated technology. The department is exploring AI and camera-based solutions to improve data accuracy and monitoring across public conservation lands.
Why it matters
Modernizing data collection is essential for effective environmental management and tourism planning in protected areas.
The Department of Conservation's (DOC) systems for counting visitors and activities at 700 sites on public conservation land are old and plagued by delays, and data loss and backlogs.
Its counters are also mostly installed underground and have to be checked manually by staff to download the data.
Now the department is asking companies what type of automated system it could replace it with, paid for out of the international visitor levy .
A document for a tender that closed on Friday showed officials were particularly interested in AI and cameras among other things.
"The current Activity Counter System ... faces end-to-end challenges across hardware, firmware, data flow, and verification, resulting in inconsistent data and operational inefficiencies," said the document .
"Manual processes dominate downloading and validation, causing delays, data loss, and backlog."
Added to this were hardware inconsistencies, while a lack of telemetry prevented real-time monitoring.
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