SoDis
Tools and research to support social
distancing
Were you directed here by one of our posters?
Here's what you need to know.
If you have seen one of our posters then we are
the building counting the number of people in occupance throughout the
day. Counting is taking place in a number of ways.
-
Automated counting via WISEBoxes
WISEBoxes count the number of WiFi enabled devices that are switched on
and probing for connections in a location. You can find out more about
them in the WISEBoxes section below. Privacy
is really important to us so these devices do not store any personal
information about you or your devices, they simply record a number of
unique devices seen within a 5 minute time period. If you would like to
remain invisible to these devices please disable WiFi on your personal
devices whilst you are in the building.
-
Automated counting via the UoN Contact Tracing Programme
We are working in partnership with The University of Nottingham
Information Services team to access data provided by their
contact tracing programme to estimate how busy locations on campus
are. You can read more about the programme at this
link including details on privacy and how to opt out. Again, privacy
is really important to us so we will not be seeking to use any
personally identifiable data in the SoDis project.
-
Manually
A small number of researchers may be in the building counting the number
of people that they can see entering and leaving during the day. They
may in addition ask you if you are carrying any WiFi enabled devices
and how many. We respect your privacy so you are entitled to refuse to
answer the question. We are asking this to help establish a 'gold
standard' count to the automated counting standards described above.
Who are we?
We are a small team of researchers from the
Horizon Digital Economy Research
Institute based at
The University of Nottingham.
Why are we doing this?
As a team of inter-disciplinary researchers, we work at the intersection
of privacy, technology, and society. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown up
a lot of challenges in society today . We have previously undertaken
research in the area of automated ways of determining space usage in the
WISEParks projects. We think that now is an ideal
time to see if that research can be applied to the current situation to
help with social distancing.
WISEBoxes
WISEBoxes are a technology platform that we have developed to help in
monitoring how busy a location is based on the WiFi signals in that area.
You can find out more about how this works in the video below.
Contact Us
If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, please contact using
using the contact form
on the Horizon website.