Estimating People Flow and Crowdedness for Various Urban Environments based on BLE Signal Sensing: Practical Studies
Yuki Matsuda, Hirohiko Suwa, Kotaro Hayashi, Taito Yoshimura, Arata Yoshihara, Ismail Arai: “Estimating People Flow and Crowdedness for Various Urban Environments based on BLE Signal Sensing: Practical Studies,” IEICE Transactions on Communications, Vol.E109-B, No.2, pp.161-170, 2025.
Abstract
To realize Society 5.0, the construction of urban digital twins is an urgent task. Among the various concern, human mobility is one of the most critical aspects that has attracted significant attention, and numerous approaches have been proposed so far. For example, the methods using CCTV cameras or LiDAR could perform high quality estimation, but they require the acquisition of sensitive data, e.g., video footage or gait data, and pose challenges of social acceptability due to the perception of surveillance. Therefore, this study aims to develop methods to estimate the number of people (crowdedness level) stay in various public spaces and the movement between places in the city (people flow) by utilizing WiFi and/or BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) signals emitted by personally owned smartphones. In particular, this paper introduces a method for estimating crowdedness levels and people flow based on BLE advertising packet data (including RSSI and random addresses), and the five practical studies in the real-world settings.
Links
DOI: https://doi.org/10.23919/transcom.2025CEI0006
PDF: https://cocolab.jp/publication/files/202602_IEICE-TC_yukimat.pdf
BibTeX
code:references.bib
@article{bib:yukimat_BLECE_BReID_IEICETransComm2026,
author={Matsuda, Yuki and Suwa, Hirohiko and Hayashi, Kotaro and Yoshimura, Taito and Yoshihara, Arata and Arai, Ismail},
title={{Estimating People Flow and Crowdedness for Various Urban Environments based on BLE Signal Sensing: Practical Studies}},
journal={IEICE Transactions on Communications},
volume={E109-B},
number={2},
year={2025},
pages={1--11},
url={https://doi.org/10.23919/transcom.2025CEI0006},
doi={10.23919/transcom.2025CEI0006}
}
https://scrapbox.io/files/688003058348b263847008f3.png
Category
Journal Paper(論文誌・ジャーナル)
Collaborative Project(共同研究)
Project
BLECE/BReID
Keywords
Urban Environment Sensing(都市環境センシング)
Crowdedness Estimation(混雑度推定)
Bluetooth Low Energy(BLE)
Public Transportation(公共交通機関)
Person Re-identification(人物再同定)
People Flow Estimation(人流推定)
Origin-Destination Estimation(OD推定)
Sensor Network(センサネットワーク)
Collaborating Organization
NAIST(奈良先端科学技術大学院大学)
Saga City(佐賀市)
Local Media Labs(ローカルメディアラボ)
Ikoma City(生駒市)