Why Occupancy Monitoring is so Tough but so Important

Traffic counters have been available in a variety of industries for decades, but have always provided nothing more than a general read-out of overall traffic into a space. While useful, no conclusions can be drawn over activity in that space or simply how busy it was.

Think of an office space. People enter around 9:00. But how long do they stay and how many were present in that building throughout the day? For that, deeper calculations and technologies must be used to provide a powerful data point – occupancy.

Separate from entries, occupancy monitoring provides insights into how busy a space truly was at any given time and must take into account both entries and exits. Unless you have individual entries and exits into a space that are strictly enforced, this requires exceedingly accurate technology that can differentiate between an entry and exit. When capturing and calculating this data, accuracy is paramount because even an occasional miss or miscount your occupancy data will skew results dramatically.

Why 99%+ Accuracy is critical to Foot Traffic Management

Occupancy monitoring can also be done not just on an entire-building basis, but on individual floors, spaces, and rooms in those spaces. With this more granular attention to data capture, opportunities only grow for improved insights, efficiency, and control.

By capturing occupancy, building owners and managers will have an understanding of how busy their buildings and spaces are. With this data, a variety of improvements can be made. Scheduling for security and custodial can be based on traffic, cleaning and maintenance more accurately based on usage, and design changes based on how and how often spaces are being used.

Occupancy data can also be incorporated into building management systems. With more granular occupancy data capture, systems like HVAC and security can be semi- or fully automated to adjust to changes in traffic and occupancy. This leads to increased operating efficiency, saving money and improving satisfaction for employees and tenants alike.

The Problem (and Solution) for Workplace Energy Usage

Ultimately, accurate occupancy monitoring is an extremely powerful undertaking to operate a building to its fullest potential and greatest efficiency. Having the knowledge of where and when visitors are using your space allows you to adjust every facet of operations and even design to keep your spaces operating inline with the people inside.