Bicycles, Outdoor Trails, and Mental Health
May is popular for Mother’s day celebrations, but what about biking as a family on Mother’s day? That is spot on with the month of May because May is National Bike Month. The League of American Bicyclists established National Bike Month in 1956.
National Bike month is full of activities and celebrations of different ways folks can participate. Commute to work on a bike, biking to grab coffee with a friend or enjoy outdoors with your family and friends.
Biking promotes healthy habits, safer streets, connected communities, healthier planet and happier people.
Outdoor Trail Solutions by Varidx
Managing hiking and bicycle trails presents challenges due to the growing user base and the demand for convenience. Visitors expect timely information on their mobile devices. Safety remains the top priority for park administration. Staffing constraints within the department may impact operational efficiency.
Varidx offers convenience and enhances efficiency. Sensor data is consolidated on a centralized dashboard accessible to visitors via their phones. Park administrators can remotely monitor trails and promptly notify users of any unforeseen conditions. Some of the solutions we have successfully implemented include:
- Trail Usage Analysis: We track the number of people and bicycles using the trails. This data informs scheduling decisions for trash collection, restroom maintenance, and staffing.
- Popularity Assessment: By analyzing usage trends, we showcase the popularity of specific trails among park visitors and decision-makers. Increased popularity may even lead to additional funding opportunities.
- Moisture Monitoring: Our Varidx dashboard tracks moisture levels on bicycle paths. When conditions become unsafe, the system automatically closes affected paths without requiring staff intervention, preventing accidents and injuries.
- Parking Management: We count cars entering and exiting parking lots to determine available spots. This helps reduce overcrowding and unnecessary driving around.
- Smart Trash Cans: Sensors continuously monitor trash can fill levels and alert staff when they need emptying. This efficient system enhances the overall visitor experience.
Every trail and park are unique, necessitating tailored solutions. Our
experienced team collaborates with departments of varying sizes, designing innovative solutions that meet specific requirements while adhering to budget
constraints. Our pilot projects start with as few as five sensors addressing the
specific needs of your department.
Let’s work together to create a solution that addresses local concerns, shares valuable information with visitors, and drives data-driven decision-making.
Outdoor Trail Solutions by Varidx
On May 10th we had an insightful discussion on Engaged Communities in Smart Cities: Challenges and Opportunities. Our distinguished panel of city leadership, urban planning experts, and technologists shared their insights and experiences from various smart city contexts
Simmi from Varidx had the opportunity to moderate a session on the most rending topic of adoption of smart cities by its residents. The distinguished panel of neighboring city leadership, urban planning experts and technologists shared their insights and experienced on various methods they use to raise engagement by the residents.
Council member of Apex Terry Mahaffey , Council member of Cary Sarika Bansal, discussed the concerns, trusting smart city initiatives, barriers and gaps that prevent residents from actively taking part in the smart city projects. They also talked about the vision for their rapidly growing towns, and how smart city initiatives are a big part of improving infrastructure to help citizens
live better.
CIO of Morrisville Rick Ralph and CIO of Wake Forest Adam Oates shared the current smart city initiatives being deployed by their respective towns, cost of the projects, tracking usage by the community as well as keeping track of the central database of the smart tech. Life cycle management was another topic of discussion as the smart technology needs constant updates and fine tuning. They shared their success stories of innovation and timely delivery of
these solutions but also making sure that resident privacy is not compromised.
Varidx is proud to partner with these towns and has been able to be a master integrator for the different sensors bringing one custom dashboard solution for tracking the data. Our real time dashboard is also resident friendly along with sending data to town officials.
Please contact Varidx for more details.
Spring 2024 Smart Cities Connect Conference & Expo
Here are some key takeaways from varidx on the smart cities conference that was held in Raleigh convention center from May 8-10th.
- Engage the community: Technology should be implemented in a way that meets the needs of the community. Discuss, survey and share information to ensure that the community is involved.
- Understand the problem to be solved: Find a solution for that problem to ensure that technology is used in a way that makes a real difference.
- Collect data with a purpose: Have a plan in place to create insights and act on them so that data collection can add value.
- Visualize data in one dashboard: Aggregating and visualizing data in one dashboard can make it easier to understand and act on.
- Gen AI is here. Small cities lack resources and infrastructure to educate themselves or implement the tech.