@City Street Imagery for the Environment, Public Safety, Compliance
Santa Rosa, California hired Bay Area @city to photograph the structures on its streets and provide software to access them. The local paper compares the images to the “controversial” Google Street View images, but with higher resolution. Further, the images are only available to the city, not the public. The goal: “save employee time, cut paper waste and curb emissions by reducing driving.” Oddly, @city’s technology is called “Steetview” and the website is copyright 2006, seemingly the last time it was updated.
This statement about funding for the technology and use made me think of Pictometry:
Funding for the photo project was provided through a state grant to help cities measure how much greenhouse gases are being removed by local trees.
With the new street-level technology, Hargreaves can quickly pull up a photo of a tree along a city street and let the software determine its height and diameter. These measurements allow the city to calculate how much greenhouse gases are absorbed by the canopies of trees along Santa Rosa streets.
Then there is the public safety side and compliance side, as used in Hayward. These are typically two big issues for Pictometry:
Hayward police officers have laptops installed in their vehicles with software to view the street-level photos. They use the program to help make decisions in the field, such as before storming a house or setting up a perimeter, Officer Lori Ferreyra said…Hayward photographs its streets every other year. It creates a time-lapse effect that lets staff view the changing cityscape, including identifying building projects that did not obtain required permits.
