Visitor Use Management

Does anyone use cell phone app data to monitor visitor counts and densities?  Our agency recently finished a 12-month pilot project exploring it's viability.  Long answer short is that it did a very good job as long as the effort was put in early to ensure it's accuracy.  Of course all the data is anonymous and meets or exceeds all privacy requirements.  While interesting, we want to make sure it's useful long term before committing more money into expanding it.  I'd like to talk with someone who's already been through that process.  Thanks!  

Hi,

We have invested and developed with our partner Propulso a very great product: a trail visitation report - this report works for trails and parks - anywhere in North America.  The product is mature, provide tons of information, and is available online. It is also affordable.  

Don't hesitate to reach out if you want to learn more.  

Does anyone use cell phone app data to monitor visitor counts and densities?  Our agency recently finished a 12-month pilot project exploring it's viability.  Long answer short is that it did a very good job as long as the effort was put in early to ensure it's accuracy.  Of course all the data is anonymous and meets or exceeds all privacy requirements.  While interesting, we want to make sure it's useful long term before committing more money into expanding it.  I'd like to talk with someone who's already been through that process.  Thanks!  

Does anyone use cell phone app data to monitor visitor counts and densities?  Our agency recently finished a 12-month pilot project exploring it's viability.  Long answer short is that it did a very good job as long as the effort was put in early to ensure it's accuracy.  Of course all the data is anonymous and meets or exceeds all privacy requirements.  While interesting, we want to make sure it's useful long term before committing more money into expanding it.  I'd like to talk with someone who's already been through that process.  Thanks!  

Hi Kris,

I would be interested to hear about your experience and which vendor you're working with. We looked at different vendors for about 6 months but found that the vendors data did not align well with our data.  No data is perfect, but we have 20+ years of visitation data and invest alot of money into visitation data collection every year. 

Does anyone use cell phone app data to monitor visitor counts and densities?  Our agency recently finished a 12-month pilot project exploring it's viability.  Long answer short is that it did a very good job as long as the effort was put in early to ensure it's accuracy.  Of course all the data is anonymous and meets or exceeds all privacy requirements.  While interesting, we want to make sure it's useful long term before committing more money into expanding it.  I'd like to talk with someone who's already been through that process.  Thanks!  

Does anyone use cell phone app data to monitor visitor counts and densities?  Our agency recently finished a 12-month pilot project exploring it's viability.  Long answer short is that it did a very good job as long as the effort was put in early to ensure it's accuracy.  Of course all the data is anonymous and meets or exceeds all privacy requirements.  While interesting, we want to make sure it's useful long term before committing more money into expanding it.  I'd like to talk with someone who's already been through that process.  Thanks!  

Does anyone use cell phone app data to monitor visitor counts and densities?  Our agency recently finished a 12-month pilot project exploring it's viability.  Long answer short is that it did a very good job as long as the effort was put in early to ensure it's accuracy.  Of course all the data is anonymous and meets or exceeds all privacy requirements.  While interesting, we want to make sure it's useful long term before committing more money into expanding it.  I'd like to talk with someone who's already been through that process.  Thanks!  

While working on the Master Plan Update for Lake Sidney Lanier, we gave serious consideration to using cell phone data to count and locate boats, and other craft, on the lake.  Unfortunately, after contacting several companies who provide that type of service the cost was too high.  Since the data are likely used for marketing and other business needs, the costs will likely remain an obstacle for government/NGO needs and may not be an option in the near future.

Counting boats on a lake has been done successfully with fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and drones.  If the lake is small and budgets are modest, the use of 10x50 binoculars in a boat with an observer, and a person to tally the location and type of boat, satisfies the need and works quite well.

I would be interested if others had different experiences with using cell phones for visitor use management.

Best regards all,

John Titre

Principal, Boating Capacity Solutions, LLC

520-308-8544

Does anyone use cell phone app data to monitor visitor counts and densities?  Our agency recently finished a 12-month pilot project exploring it's viability.  Long answer short is that it did a very good job as long as the effort was put in early to ensure it's accuracy.  Of course all the data is anonymous and meets or exceeds all privacy requirements.  While interesting, we want to make sure it's useful long term before committing more money into expanding it.  I'd like to talk with someone who's already been through that process.  Thanks!  

Does anyone use cell phone app data to monitor visitor counts and densities?  Our agency recently finished a 12-month pilot project exploring it's viability.  Long answer short is that it did a very good job as long as the effort was put in early to ensure it's accuracy.  Of course all the data is anonymous and meets or exceeds all privacy requirements.  While interesting, we want to make sure it's useful long term before committing more money into expanding it.  I'd like to talk with someone who's already been through that process.  Thanks!  

Hi Kris,

Michigan DNR tried a pilot project using cell phone data across about 10 sites a few years ago.  We found that it worked better for some sites than others.  Some of the issues we experienced were on sites where there was limited cell service (or in one case cell service was coming from Canada for some) and the numbers were way below what we expected.  There were also issues with day visits and campers getting lumped together thereby rendering the visitor patterns in terms of busiest times and hours spent in the park pretty useless.  Multiple roads through the parks were also problematic.  There are ways of geofencing areas to correct these issues but overall I was not impressed.  Other staff had issues with the population segments they categorized visitors into, finding them borderline offensive.  This was the first time this particular company had completed a project like this and I think there was a lot to learn.  I have seen other much more convincing studies, but they typically show use patterns rather than trying to put a number on visits.  New York State Parks did a study of 21 state parks in partnership with The Trust for Public Land in 2019 which is what first got us excited about the prospect (sorry, I can't find a link).  Sorry I am only able to share some of the potential problems rather than successes!

Does anyone use cell phone app data to monitor visitor counts and densities?  Our agency recently finished a 12-month pilot project exploring it's viability.  Long answer short is that it did a very good job as long as the effort was put in early to ensure it's accuracy.  Of course all the data is anonymous and meets or exceeds all privacy requirements.  While interesting, we want to make sure it's useful long term before committing more money into expanding it.  I'd like to talk with someone who's already been through that process.  Thanks!  

Does anyone use cell phone app data to monitor visitor counts and densities?  Our agency recently finished a 12-month pilot project exploring it's viability.  Long answer short is that it did a very good job as long as the effort was put in early to ensure it's accuracy.  Of course all the data is anonymous and meets or exceeds all privacy requirements.  While interesting, we want to make sure it's useful long term before committing more money into expanding it.  I'd like to talk with someone who's already been through that process.  Thanks!  

Hi, Kris -

We at Jeffco Open Space have explored cell phone mobility data fairly in depth. 

Though we do see potential value in some specific instances (mostly urban environments), we determined that this tool is not currently reliable enough to help with our needs at JCOS and do not plan to pursue at this time. We conducted verification exercises to compare cell data numbers from multiple companies to ours (based on physical counters and observations) and found the discrepancy to be significant. 

We also have questions about the extrapolation techniques based on a remarkably small sample size (I believe it was roughly a 1,000x coefficient of verified phones to stated numbers). The small sample size may have been due to cell connectivity issues at the location that we tested, but the question remains of how the math works to make such a leap. I do know of existing algorithms based on probabilistic data structures that could help with this, but we would like to have a better understanding of the underlying math and how the stated accuracy is calculated to feel comfortable moving forward (most companies are claiming a  =>95% accuracy).

Additionally, privacy laws appear to impact this type of product and are regularly changing, so the variance of reliability over time may be quite significant.  

Overall, we hoped that cell phone mobility data would be the final solution to visitor data, but have not found a product that is reliable enough at this time for our purposes in the environment that we manage. 

Our team is happy to discuss this further, feel free to reach out with any questions. 

Eric Krause

ekrause@jeffco.us

Does anyone use cell phone app data to monitor visitor counts and densities?  Our agency recently finished a 12-month pilot project exploring it's viability.  Long answer short is that it did a very good job as long as the effort was put in early to ensure it's accuracy.  Of course all the data is anonymous and meets or exceeds all privacy requirements.  While interesting, we want to make sure it's useful long term before committing more money into expanding it.  I'd like to talk with someone who's already been through that process.  Thanks!