Glossary of Terms

• Accuracy– used within the field of people counting to describe both how well a people counting device picks up and counts targets under different environmental conditions and varying volumes of pedestrian traffic, and how well bi-directional footfall counters balance between ‘in’ counts and ‘out’ counts.

• Anonymise– to carry out a process or organise in such a way as to preserve anonymity. A process often required when using video based counters in order to protect the identity of people passing through a count zone. This functionality has been built into the Brickstream 3Dpeople counters that Axiomatic use.

• Automatic Visitor Counter – a device which replaces the need to manually count the number of people visiting a site. An automated visitor counter monitors and reports on the number of people passing ‘in’ or ‘out’ of an entrance.

• Axiomatic Technology Ltd. – technical development company established in 1994 specialising in hardware and software development of footfall technology, occupancy management, space management, desk counting, and motion control systems.

• BACnet – Building Automation and Control Networks. This is an ISO standard for joining together BMS controllers and devices over a network that is dedicated to the BMS. This enables HVAC to be centrally controlled and monitored to make huge efficiency savings and measure HVAC usage.

• Battery Powered Beam Counter – Refers to a break-beam counter that takes its power from an on board battery(s). Not having to plug a counter into the mains provides numerous advantages – primarily flexibility of location. Especially useful for outdoor environments. Batteries typically last around 1 year.
• Battery Powered People Counters – refers to any automated people counting device that takes its power from an on board battery(s). Not having to plug a counter into the mains provides numerous advantages – primarily flexibility of location. Especially useful for outdoor environments. Usually battery powered people counters operate on a beam-break system, as these are less power consuming that overhead devices.
• Beam Counter- a basic form of break-beam people counting technology using either a single or dual infra-red beams and a reflector or receiver to monitor visitor counts as people break the infra-red beam(s). Such counters are suitable for monitoring basic footfall trends, but their accuracy depends on the environment where they are mounted, the width of the entrance and the volume of traffic. As they will not count two people side-by-side, such counters should not be used for occupancy counting or event management.
• Bi-directional footfall– the ability for a people counter device to count in both directions.
• Brickstream– American technology company and hardware supplier, based in Atlanta, who have developed the Brickstream 2200 dual-view 3D video counter offering unrivalled levels of accurate customer counting, tracking and queue counting. Brickstream work closely in partnership with Axiomatic, to ensure that our people counting solutions meet the requirements of different markets.

• Brickstream 2510 – Stereoscopic people counting device capable of advanced customer tracking. The dual lenses allow the unit to see both the height and shape of the count targets, offering high levels of count accuracy.

• Building Energy Management – solutions help commercial organisations reduce carbon emissions and energy use. Building Energy Solutions are used to regulate and monitor HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC Control) – and often lighting too. By using people counters and timetables to help monitor actual and planned space usage, we can integrate counters with the HVAC to improve efficiency. It is then possible to show energy use per person rather than per square metre of a commercial site.

• Building information modeling (BIM) – People Counting data can be integrated with other metrics to assist with building information modelling processes involving the generation and management of digital representations of physical and functional characteristics of a facility. These building information models are shared to support decision-making about a facility from earliest conceptual stages, through design and construction, through its operational life.

• Building Management System– a Building Management System (BMS) is a computer-based control system installed in buildings that controls and monitors the building’s mechanical and electrical equipment such as ventilation, lighting, power systems, fire systems, and security systems. A BMS consists of software and hardware controllers usually joined together by a network. The BMS network is usually BACnet. People counting technology can be used to help a Building Management system run more efficiently by helping to control energy use based on the occupancy of specific zones within the building.

• Conversion Rate– refers to either the number of people passing a retail outlet who enter the store or the number of people who have made a purchase compared to the footfall in a given period. The first is shown as a ratio or percentage from the equation: Passing Traffic / Footfall, the second is shown as a ratio or percentage from the equation: Sales Transactions / Total Footfall (See Increasing Retail Conversion Rate).

• Count Lines– the lines that are configured encapsulating an entrance or exit to maximise the tracking time for a thermal or video people counter, whilst minimising any errors created to objects, merchandise or customer movement within the counting zone.

• Counting Zone– the specific area seen by a footfall counter, or the total area encapsulated by footfall counters covering each pedestrian entrance.

• Customer Conversion – refers to either the number of people passing a retail outlet who enter the store or the number of people who have made a purchase compared to the footfall in a given period. The first is shown as a ratio or percentage from the equation: Passing Traffic / Footfall, the second is shown as a ratio or percentage from the equation: Sales Transactions / Total Footfall.

• Customer Counter – A device used to measure how many customers a business is receiving.  The resultant data can be used to understand conversion rates and make business decisions.

• Customer Counting  – A useful method used by retailers or organisations to measure the number of visitors they attract using people counting technology.

• Customer Insight – is the collection, deployment and analysis of information that allows a business to acquire, develop, understand and retain their customer base. Footfall offers a key piece of data to allow businesses greater insight into customer behaviour.

• Customer Traffic – The number of customers visiting a retail store is often referred to as customer traffic or customer flow.

• Desk Sensors – PIS sensors placed on or around work stations to monitor occupancy to generate data regarding usage.

• Dwell Time– refers to the amount of time a person spends in a specific zone or site. Average dwell time can be calculated using bi-directional footfall counts and calculations based on the average occupancy over a specific time period. Using customer tracking technology more detailed dwell time analysis can be gained for specific visitors

• Electronic People Counter – Electronic device used to detect the number of people entering and leaving a zone.  Methods can include break beam systems, thermal signature recognition and 3D video technology.

• Event Counting– monitoring the number of patrons at a specific event, in order to gauge interest in the event, or to assist with health & safety and crowd management.

• Event Management-The use of systematic planning and provision for, along with supervision of, factors that may affect an event and crowd behaviour. Good event management involves the assessment of the people handling capabilities of a space prior to use. It includes evaluation of projected and live occupancy levels, displays of clear signage showing areas of ingress and egress, suitable staffing levels and clearly defined and communicated emergency evacuation procedures.

• Event Occupancy – Event Occupancy – a general term for the amount of people at a particular event. An event may cover several buildings or spaces. Event occupancy may also refer to the theoretical amount of people who can attend an event, often used when event planning.
• Flow accuracy– the accuracy of a people counter counting footfall in a single direction.

• Footfall– a specialised term referring to the number of people who go into a shop, business, site or space in a particular period of time. Footfall is an important indicator of how successful a company’s advertising is at bringing people into its shops.

• Footfall Comparison– allows users to compare footfall counts from different sites or time periods in order to assess historical footfall trends, or compare the performance of different sites over time.

• Footfall Counter – An electronic device use to measure footfall; i.e. the number of people entering and leaving a zone.  Methods include break beam systems, thermal detection and video detection.

• Footfall Reporting – The information generated by footfall counting devices, presented as usable data to help make business decisions.

• Free Flow Event– an event where fans can move freely between one zone and another often resulting in the potential for over-crowding where use of people counters to monitor visitor flow rates can help to predict the expected time when a zone will reach maximum occupancy, helping the event control team to put flow management procedures into place before over-crowding occurs.

• Frequency how often a room or space is used within a pre-determined time period.

• Group Counting – an advanced people counting algorithm that can determine the potential relationship between visitors based on their proximity to one another and the path they take through the counting zone

• HVAC – The general term for Heating, Ventilation and Air conditioning. These are the main areas of energy consumption in a University or office environment and minimising waste can result in huge cost savings.

• Increase retail conversion rate – Every retailer wants to increase their sales. This can be done by increasing the footfall into the store, or increasing the basket size of each customer, or alternatively by ensuring that more potential customers who visit the site receive the right level of customer service to feel happy to buy something. Increasing the retail conversion rate of your store means getting more sales per prospective customer that enters the site. A small increase in your retail conversion rate can have a larger impact on improving your bottom line.

• Infra-red Counter – break-beam counters use horizontal infra-red beams in order to count people as the beam is broken when people pass the counter.

• Irisys– UK based manufacturer of thermal counting and high-resolution thermal cameras. Established in 1996 Infrared Integrated Systems Ltd (Irisys) designs and manufactures thermal detectors and systems which are used for people counting, queue management, thermal imaging, security and healthcare applications.

• Live Event Occupancy – refers to a snapshot at any given point in time, of the amount of people currently at an event. An automated people counting system can allow organisations to track their live event occupancy throughout the day in real-time.

• Live Occupancy Counting– Use of electronic people counters in order to provide a live occupancy and visitor flow rate display showing data within 10 seconds of targets passing through a counting zone.

• Live People Counting – refers to the process of tracking people as they enter or exit a space, and feeding back this data in real-time to the end user.

• Marketing Performance Measurement and Management (MPM) -is a term used by marketing professionals to describe the analysis and improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing. This is accomplished by focus on the alignment of marketing activities, strategies, and metrics with business goals. It involves the creation of a metrics framework to monitor marketing performance, and then develop and utilize marketing dashboards to manage marketing performance. It focuses on measuring, managing, and analysing marketing performance to maximize effectiveness and optimize the return of investment (ROI) of marketing. Three elements play a critical role in managing marketing performance—data, analytics, and metrics. Although brand recognition may form part of the purpose of marketing, for a retailer, an increase in sales and profits provides the key ROI. However, an increase in sales transactions alone does not give a full picture of the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. If sales transaction have gone up by 10%, but store footfall has actually increased by 100%, then the campaign has been highly effective, but other factors have reduced the potential ROI. Thus the use of data from people counters to add footfall metrics as part of the MPM is key to understand the true effectiveness of a marketing campaign.

• Missed Opportunities– refers to those potential customers who visit a store but leave without making a purchase due to excessive queue length or queue waiting times, lack of available staff, pricing or product availability.

• Mobile Detection– the ability to track the unique short range signals from mobile phones in order to anonymously track the location of a specific user. This technology can be used to create a heatmap of a retail unit, shopping mall, or town centre for example.

• Occupancy– the total number of people in a specific space, calculated by the total number of ‘in’ counts minus the total number of ‘out’ counts at any given time, or by the use of Brickstream Zone tracking technology that can analyse the total number of people within view of a counter (up to a maximum area of 6 square metres per counter dependant on the mounting height of the equipment.)

• Occupancy Accuracy– occupancy accuracy is achieved by using overhead counters with accurate and consistent flow-rate accuracy. Occupancy accuracy can be subject to cumulative errors due to slight inaccuracies inherent in all existing people counting technologies. Such inaccuracies are exacerbated by low maximum capacities combined with short average dwell times and high footfall, and high volume traffic flow rates. In order to manage this Axiomatic carefully monitor the accuracy of the counters under different conditions to apply the relevant factors to ‘in’ or ‘out’ counts in order to balance potential errors, and are able to inform clients of the expected tolerance of a system to ensure that decisions are made based on understood data.

• Occupancy Management– the use of available information from visual, CCTV and people counting equipment to assist with decisions and the implementation of processes to help control the visitor flow and occupancy of venues with a predefined maximum capacity.

• Occupancy Tracking – the process of monitoring how many people are in a building/space/area and how it changes over time.

• Occupant-Centric Scenario Modelling for Energy Management – Using Axiomatic People Counting ‘Smart Building’ Space Management solutions allows businesses to understand the use of energy in buildings per person rather than per square metre.

• Office Space Management – refers to systems used to improve the efficient use of desks and meeting rooms within office space. Hot-desking and Hotelling can be used to increase the ratio of staff to desks. Axiomatic provide a desk-sensor which can measure the utilisation of desks by monitoring activity at individual desks, departments or floors of a building.

• Outdoor People Counter – any people counting device that is weather resistant and/or durable can be described as an Outdoor People Counter. Most outdoor people counters are battery powered, with a degree of IP waterproof rating. Some versions are also vandal proof – with tough outer casings.

• Outdoor Visitor Counter – refers to an Outdoor People Counter that is placed in a location to count visitors to an attraction, visitor centre or place of interest.

• Over-counting– the tendency for some people counting technology to count more people than are actually passing due to confusion caused by environmental conditions, or by insufficient configuration, or unexpected staff or customer behaviour within the counting zone.

• Passing Traffic – The term passing traffic refers to the amount of people walking past your site. For example, passing traffic for a high street retail store would be those people walking past the front of the store on the street outside.

• People Counter – a general term for any automatic electronic device for monitoring visitor numbers.

• People Counting – the process through which footfall data on visitors and customers is collected.

• Power over Ethernet or PoE technology describes a system to pass electrical power safely, along with data, on CAT5 or CAT6 Ethernet cabling. The Q-Scan Twincomm Counters, Irisys Thermal Counters and Brickstream 3D all support PoE.
• Real-Time Counting– the ability to display live footfall or occupancy counts within 5 seconds of the target having passed through a count-zone.

• Refining Opening Hours– The process of studying customer traffic & sales transactions, compared to staffing costs and business overheads associated with a site being open, to identify the times when it becomes profitable to keep a site open, and when it is best to close due to lack of potential customers. Assessing footfall and passing traffic gives a more accurate measure for determining opening hours and maximising sales.

• Remote Monitoring– A service offered by Axiomatic to help check that our clients people counters are connected to the network, and are functioning correctly. This process automatically flags any correction errors and can highlight specific accuracy problems. Remote access to people counters also allow Axiomatic engineers to log into a counter see check the view of the count zone, and manually assess the accuracy of a counter.

• Retail Footfall – The number of potential customers entering a retail environment.  This kind of data can be used against sales figures to give conversion rates.

• Retail Footfall Index – a regional and national comparison of footfall statistics from a number of sites across a country.

• Retail Metrics – Data which can be analysed and combined to give a better picture of customer behaviour, marketing effectiveness and store and staff performance. Footfall data provides a key metric in helping retailers understand the strengths of their business and where improvements can be made.

• Sales Conversation (ratio)– the number of people who actually make a purchase in a retail store, compared to the total amount of visitors to a store – measuring the share of visitors against buyers by site – shown as a ratio or percentage from the equation: Sales Transactions / Total Footfall.

• Shopper Tracking– The ability to highlight the paths of individual customers, or build up a customer heat-map showing the most commonly used paths throughout a retail space and the key areas of interest where customers spend the most time browsing.

• SQL database (MS SQL, MySQL)– SQL is ‘structured query language’ and is an industry-standard database language. A database is usually used to store the people count data in a way that can be queried so that questions such as “how many people entered such-a-zone last week?” or “how does the footfall at one site compare to another?’ Such flexible structure allows users to import, compare, query and report on multiple metrics. There are two main variants of a SQL database: MySQL and Microsoft SQL. There are other variants from Oracle, and other software vendors.

• Staff Planning– is a continuous process of shaping the staff profile to ensure that it is capable of delivering business objectives and maintaining a high level of customer service to maximise sales conversion ratios in retail, and customer satisfaction in service industries. The use of footfall data to help predict peaks and troughs in customer numbers can help a business reduce staff costs during periods of low footfall, and maximise customer service and profit during periods of high footfall where customer service may suffer due to under-staffing.

• Stereoscopic– having two lenses to facilitate the ability to create 3-dimensional vision creating an image with both depth and shape. Stereoscopic video counters like the Xovis PC3 series use this ability to achieve more accurate people counting.

• Tailgating– describes the behaviour of one person directly following another through security gate. This is typically a problem with swipe-card access-controlled doors, where one person swipes his card, and another follows.  An electronic tailgate monitor can instigate a tailgate alarm when two people try to pass through a security gate simultaneously.

• Traffic Density– The number of people passing under a people counter, within a specific space at any one time.
• Under-counting– the propensity for some people counting devices to count fewer people than are actually passing through the counting zone. This is a specific weakness where Beam Counters are used across a wide entrance. However, both thermal and video counters can also be subject to under-counting when traffic density reaches extremely high levels. Consistent under counting can be compensated for by adding a factor to each set of counts e.g. daily footfall + 10%.

• University Space Management – A system developed by Axiomatic using a range of people counting technology, deployed across teaching space and other key student areas within univeristies, to gather data of peak occupancy, frequency of use and to caclutate accurate space utilisation data.

• Utilisation is the metric for space usage calculated by looking at the average room occupancy and room use frequency.

• Velocity Filter – a people counting algorithm that can define which targets are counted based on speed of transit through the counting zone.

• Venue Occupancy – a general term for the number of people that can fit inside a venue.

• Video Counter– a people counting device based on a standard video lens. Usually, analysing footfall targets through black and white images as these offer greater levels of contrast. The majority of video based counting systems are subject to changes in ambient light and shadow which can create problems in accuracy or data consistency.
• Video Validation– a facility enabled on the Irisys Dual-View IRC3030 thermal people counter and the Brickstream 2300 video counter which enables recording of a video stream alongside footfall data, allowing the video, stored count data and diagnostic information to be polled via a single IP data stream
• Visitor Counter – a device designed to count the number of people entering a public venue.

• Weather Effect – the effect that weather has on the footfall trends of various sites, depending on their; purpose, stock and location. For instance on a rainy day footfall may increase at a sheltered Shopping Centre, or for Outdoor Leisure stores, or a shop selling umbrellas, but fall for normal high street stores. The effects on footfall of good or inclement weather upon a site will vary depending on the nature and location of that site. By assessing the affect weather on footfall managers can estimate the quantitative traffic response and make suitable staffing adjustments.

• Wireless Footfall Counter – see also: Wireless People Counter

• Wireless People Counter – refers to any automated people counting device that operates without the use of wires or cables, for both power and data transfer.

• Workplace Management– People counters can be deployed to assist with workspace management by showing peaks and troughs in office occupancy throughout each day, week and month to show the percentage use of an office space, against its designated capacity. Most office space management analysis is either taken from anecdotal evidence, where each department may have a vested interest in protecting their space and reporting over-use, or on manual count which are both labour intensive and give only a snapshot of the actual level of use. As the cost of running a single office workstation is estimated at £7,000 per annum, many organisations look to consolidate space. People counters offer an objective, consistent and clear overview across time to provide solid data to efficiently manage desk space and inform business decisions with regards to consolidation or expansion of premises.

See also:

• Workforce Management– scheduling staff hours to maximise efficient use of office space, especially where hot-desking and flexible workspaces and break-out areas are in use. Alternatively this phrase can relate to scheduling staff to maximise sales conversion in a retail arena.