Redflex announces the launch of Halo Edge. The latest clean air and low emission zone camera solution.

Air Quality Crisis

Air pollution levels remain dangerously high in many parts of the world. New data, published in May 2018, from the World Health Organisation (WHO) shows that 9 out of 10 people breathe air containing high levels of pollutants. Updated estimations reveal an alarming death toll of 7 million people every year caused by ambient (outdoor) and household air pollution.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of WHO:

“Political leaders at all levels of government, including city mayors, are now starting to pay attention and take action. The good news is that we are seeing more and more governments increasing commitments to monitor and reduce air pollution as well as more global action from the health sector and other sectors like transport, housing and energy.”

Improving air quality, combatting climate change – Saving Lives

As well as being a leading source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the transport sector is responsible for a large proportion of urban air pollution. In cities, many of which have experienced rapid growth in traffic, air quality has become a pressing issue.

Road transport is estimated to be responsible for up to 30% of particulate emissions (PM) in European cities and up to 50% of PM emissions in OECD countries – mostly due to diesel vehicles, a lack of public and active transport networks¹.

The intense focus on air pollution and diesel emissions over the past few years has resulted in a steady stream of government announcements involving Clean Air Zones, Low Emission Zones and other similar schemes. It can be hard to keep up, but these new policies will have a profound effect on our lives.

What are Clean Air Zones?

A Clean Air Zone (CAZ) defines an area where targeted action is taken to improve air quality and resources are prioritised and coordinated in order to shape the urban environment in a way that delivers improved health benefits and supports economic growth².

In many UK towns and cities, they have unacceptable levels of harmful Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) pollution. In 2015, the UK government revealed plans to improve air quality in cities, with the introduction of five Clean Air Zones (Birmingham, Derby, Leeds, Nottingham and Southampton), to be operational by 2020.

London has its own Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) coming into force from 8th April 2019.

There will be two types of Clean Air Zones: non-charging and charging.

1 WHO Health, environment, and sustainable development – Transport health impacts, air pollution:

https://www.who.int/sustainable-development/transp...

2 Policy paper published by Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and Department for Transport on Air quality:

Clean Air Zone Framework for England

Redflex – For a World on the Move

We are an innovative global technology company, designing and creating solutions that enable smarter cities and keep people moving. For over 20 years we have designed, implemented and maintained solutions that address challenges related to roadway safety, congestion and vehicle emissions.

Redflex develops and manufactures a wide range of high-performing digital photo enforcement solutions including red light, speed, access management and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems, using advanced detection and image capture technologies.

In the U.S, Redflex predominantly operates a Build, Own (lease/SaaS/IaaS), Operate and Maintain business model, where it provides enforcement and processing services to largely municipal customers on a fully outsourced multi-year contracted basis.

We therefore own and operate one of the largest networks of digital speed and red-light enforcement systems in the world and are a key provider to one of England’s largest Intelligent Traffic Systems (ITS) projects.

In recent years, Redflex has leveraged these core capabilities into the much larger and faster growing ITS market. Last year we launched two new products which are the building blocks for our ITS portfolio:

• Halo, a multi-functional solution within one system, giving the options of speed and red-light enforcement, ANPR capability and traffic management.
• Alcyon Back Office, a cloud-based platform for back-office traffic violation processing and an end to end case management system.

Introducing Halo Edge

Building on the success and investment into our sector, today marks a very exciting day in Redflex’s 22-year journey as we launch Halo Edge.

Expanding on our advanced and world leading Halo platform of ANPR technology, sensor cameras and Alcyon Back Office processing services, Redflex introduces Halo Edge, the next generation (deep learning based algorithms) intelligent ANPR camera solution that delivers Clean Air / Low Emissions Zones detection.

Halo Edge is a fully automated and integrated ANPR camera solution that is proven to deliver Clean Air / Low Emissions Zones coverage by vehicle detection, capture and monitoring compliance through processing the data from the Halo Edge intelligent cameras and other types of sensors (e.g. loops, radars, pollution sensors, rain sensors, parking meters, etc.)

The Halo Edge key features include:

• Number plate recognition across 4 lanes of traffic.
• Embedded Make and Model and Colour Recognition.
• Classification of LGV, HGV, vans, motorbikes, bicycles and pedestrians.
• 5 MP twin cameras (black/ white and colour) for number plate and scene images.
• Average speed and journey time.
• Detection of bi directional, closed lane, dangerous goods vehicles and wrong way.
• Instant speed (advisory only).

The technology and how it works

Redflex utilises its Alcyon platforms to provide a truly integrated service to support cities to reduce carbon emissions.

After the Halo Edge cameras capture and validate vehicle number plates, this data is sent to Alcyon Express, Redflex’s middle-office solution for data matching, real-time alerting and system monitoring.

Alcyon Express receives the number plate information and video analytics data from the Halo Edge cameras, then automatically looks up the vehicle registration information to determine the emissions class of a vehicle and validates if a potential offence has occurred. Incident files are created for potential non-compliant vehicles and / or violations.

The incident files are transferred to Alcyon Back Office for automated and / or manual offence processing e.g. incident review, infringement issuance, correspondence management etc. Alcyon Back Office has powerful capabilities to provide additional functionality for further vehicle classification and characterisation alerts and data sets.

Redflex offers leading-edge technology and end-to-end solutions in strong partnership with our customers.

Building success

• To date over 70 police regions have installed 170 Halo Edge cameras in a major European city
• Operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with minimal intervention or maintenance
• Detecting over 1 million vehicles per day in around the European City
• An additional 330 cameras to be installed in the next two years for full implementation of the Low Emission Zone programme
• Project includes the back-office solution to manage and process all of the vehicle number plates captured and then transferring the data to the adjudication stage
• Redflex is also in discussions with cities in the UK and Europe who are considering the operations of Clean Air / Low Emissions Zones.

Please contact us for further information at marketing@redflex.com.au