An important stage in setting up a system for counting people using Centurion Way at its Southern end, is to verify that our Axiomatic People counter is registering people on the path correctly.
Automated counting is not as straight forward as it may first appear using a beam counter. For example a child in a pram looks very much like a trolley full of groceries to our infrared light beams that the counters use to detect people. We want to be sure only to count people passing and avoid false counts from trolleys, cats and dogs.
It was anticipated the counters would under count slightly. Our hope is that they can provide a reliable lower bound to the number of people who use the path daily.
Sarah Sharp (a Green Party Chichester District Councillor) joined Mark Record (from the FoCW) to make a verification count on the 7th January 2021.
Between 15:08 and 15:38, Sarah and Mark counted the number of people passing the counter on the path.
Sarah counted 34 people heading South bound while the counter registered 29 individuals travelling in that direction.
Mark counted 26 people heading North bound while the counter registered 23 individuals travelling in that direction.
This indicates the counter picked up 86.6% of the people passing which is well within the 20% accuracy the FoCW were hoping the counters would achieve.