The councilor for Modernization, Sabina-Goretti Galindo, together with the councillors for the beaches and emergencies, were at the Orihuela Costa town hall on Tuesday morning where, they introduced the new camera system that will allow monitoring of occupancy on La Costa beaches. The manager of Hidraqua, Juan José Alonso, and the chief of the Local Police, José María Pomares, were also present at the meeting.
These state of the art systems don’t shoot images. Instead they detect body temperatures through which the public will be able to find out the occupation in real time of each of the beaches and coves on the Oriolan coast using a heat map.
“These cameras also provide quick action in case safety distances are not being respected and also, in cases where the maximum capacity is exceeded by body temperature,” Galindo explained.
The project, which is part of the “Smart City” strategy for the implementation of intelligent service systems, is being pioneered in Orihuela at both provincial and national level, with the municipality being the first city to implement this service on all of its beaches.
Councillor Galindo said, “we are modernising the administrative links to what will be our” Smart City “, allowing us to obtain data that allows us to carry out more effective policies and to have safer beaches” .
Hidraqua installed the cameras and as its manager Alonso added, “we developed an algorithm that allows us to transform a high definition television image into heat maps that indicate the density of occupation of the beaches. This allows users to assess which of the 11 beaches have less occupation before deciding where to go. ”
This information is available to the public through the main page of the Orihuela Council website in the “Safe Beaches” section: http://www.orihuela.es/via-publica-medio-ambiente-y-territorio/playas/playas-seguras-covid-19/
López thanked the work carried out by the Local Police and stressed that “with this tool we will ensure that when the public go to our beaches they will be in a privileged and safe environment, as we want to safeguard the health of our visitors .”
