About
VivaCity Labs is a smart cities technology company that deploys advanced AI computer vision sensors across urban road networks to deliver rich, anonymized transport data insights. Designed for city councils, transport authorities, and highway agencies, VivaCity's platform addresses three core challenges: sustainability, safety, and traffic optimisation. On the sustainability side, VivaCity enables cities to understand modal shift patterns—tracking pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles—so planners can design effective decarbonisation strategies grounded in real-world evidence. For safety, the sensors detect near-miss incidents and hazardous behaviors before they become accidents, accelerating the path toward Vision Zero goals. On the optimisation front, VivaCity integrates with existing traffic signal infrastructure to enable dynamic, data-driven signal control that reduces congestion and prioritizes sustainable transport modes. Powered by edge AI and computer vision, the sensors are privacy-preserving by design—no personally identifiable information is retained. Data is accessible through the VivaCity Dashboard, offering intuitive visualizations of turning counts, speed profiles, pedestrian flows, and more. The system outperforms traditional loop detectors and pneumatic tubes in accuracy and depth of insight. VivaCity serves markets across the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and North America, with a growing roster of local authority and national highway agency clients. It is purpose-built for enterprise and public-sector deployments where reliable, high-fidelity transport data is critical for infrastructure investment decisions.
Key Features
- Multimodal Traffic Monitoring: AI sensors detect and classify pedestrians, cyclists, motorcycles, cars, and other transport modes, capturing counts, speeds, turning movements, and dwell times in real time.
- Smart Road Safety Analytics: Automatically identifies near-miss incidents and dangerous road behaviors, enabling proactive hazard intervention and data-driven safety improvements aligned with Vision Zero.
- Adaptive Signal Control: Integrates with existing traffic signal systems to dynamically optimize signal timings based on live multimodal demand, reducing congestion and prioritizing sustainable modes.
- Privacy-Preserving Edge AI: All processing occurs on-device; only anonymized aggregate data is transmitted, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations and protecting individual identities.
- VivaCity Dashboard: A web-based portal providing intuitive access to transport data visualizations, trend analysis, and downloadable reports for transport planners and engineers.
Use Cases
- City councils monitoring pedestrian and cyclist volumes at key junctions to inform active travel infrastructure investment decisions.
- Highway agencies identifying high-risk road locations using near-miss incident data to prioritize safety interventions before fatal collisions occur.
- Transport authorities evaluating the impact of new cycling lanes or pedestrianisation schemes through before-and-after multimodal traffic counts.
- Traffic signal engineers optimizing signal timings at congested junctions using real-time multimodal demand data to reduce delay and emissions.
- Urban planners tracking modal shift trends over time to measure progress against local transport decarbonisation and Vision Zero targets.
Pros
- High Accuracy Multimodal Detection: Outperforms traditional loop detectors and manual counts by capturing a wide range of road users with high accuracy across diverse conditions.
- Privacy-by-Design Architecture: Edge processing ensures no personal data leaves the sensor, making deployment straightforward in privacy-sensitive public environments.
- Actionable Safety Insights: Near-miss detection provides early warning signals about dangerous locations, enabling authorities to act before fatal incidents occur.
- Supports Sustainable Transport Goals: Modal shift tracking directly supports evidence-based active travel and decarbonisation strategies required by modern urban transport policy.
Cons
- Enterprise-Only Pricing: VivaCity is a B2B enterprise platform with no self-serve or public pricing, making it inaccessible for smaller organizations or individual researchers.
- Hardware Dependency: The solution requires physical sensor installation on streets or junctions, which involves procurement, planning permissions, and deployment logistics.
- Limited Public-Sector Fit for Smaller Authorities: Smaller local authorities with limited budgets may find the cost of sensor rollout and ongoing platform licensing prohibitive compared to simpler counting methods.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does VivaCity protect personal data?
VivaCity sensors process video on the edge device itself and only transmit anonymized aggregate data—no images or personally identifiable information leave the sensor, ensuring compliance with GDPR and equivalent data protection regulations.
What types of road users can VivaCity sensors detect?
The AI can classify pedestrians, cyclists, e-scooters, motorcycles, cars, vans, buses, trucks, and other transport modes, providing count, speed, and turning behavior data for each category.
Can VivaCity integrate with existing traffic signal infrastructure?
Yes. VivaCity's Smart Signal Control product integrates with standard traffic signal controllers to enable data-driven adaptive signal timing based on real-time multimodal demand.
In which countries does VivaCity operate?
VivaCity has dedicated operations in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and North America, with deployment experience across a wide range of urban and highway environments.
How is the data accessed after collection?
Clients access their transport data through the VivaCity Dashboard, a web-based portal offering visualizations, trend reports, and data exports for use in transport planning and engineering analysis.
