A service for showing real-time busyness of locations CrowdFlow A service for showing real-time busyness of locations CrowdFlow Service/App that shows the real-time busyness of locations

Main Idea App shows users live wait-times and future busyness Free flow of information is good (economics 101) Users will save time More distributed stress on services Inexpensive to set up (<$15 per location, one-time cost) Main idea: tell the user how much they are going to wait Economics, free flow of information is good for growing the economy because people can make better decisions You want a coffee, app will tell you, Starbucks is 15 min, Tim Hortons is 5 min. You’re going to save 10 min of time. This scales really well, if everyone uses the app, everyone can save 10 minutes. Distributes the stress on a system, it can distribute people to different locations, and to different times. (Come back later, see graph) The service costs about $15 to set up

The App User sees: Updates every 60 seconds Basic indication of busyness People in vicinity People in line (if applicable) Wait time (if applicable) Chart with predicted data Updates every 60 seconds Web interface, accessible from any device Here’s what the app looks like (also shows graphs) Data can update every 60 seconds, but there are ways of shortening that Accessible from any device

Applying the system at UBC 40+ food service locations run by UBC Students will choose to eat at least busy location, and at the least busy time Distributes the load over time and over locations Shorter lineups overall, more students going to eat Idea: install this system at UBC and see what the changes are Have several controls and several experiments Release at the start of September

The “Nodes” Small, low power USB devices Can be installed in any outlet using a USB adapter Total cost to make: $15 Require access to ubcvisitor network to function (to upload data) Need to be placed near the line- up Service requires a node Be places at every location you want to monitor Really cheap, needs WIFI.

User Interface Neural Net 1 7 4 Neural Net 2 3 Node Web API ANN Service 1 5 Neural Net 2 2 6 How is works: You need a node, piece of hardware that tracks “probe requests”. System uses a web API, stores the data in a DB, then sends if to a ANN to be analyzed Database Neural Net 3

Why CrowdFlow’s Technology Advantages Disadvantages CrowdFlow Tracking probe requests with nodes Cheap. Very scalable. Transparent system. Not as accurate as other methods. Monitoring router connections Slightly more accurate than probe requests. Very expensive to set up. Not worth it to expand to small businesses. Tracking mobile devices Can track users no matter where they are. Requires large initial userbase. Not transparent to users. Huge privacy risk.

Privacy Concerns Nodes rely on probe requests, which are broadcasted publicly Nodes cannot access or intercept data other than probe requests Probe requests contain a MAC address (unique identifier), MAC addresses are stripped before transmission. No personal information is ever stored. Even if system was compromised, no personal information could be extracted.

Neural Network Analysis CrowdFlow uses an Artificial Neural Network to predict how many people are around and what the lineup is like. Needs to be “trained” by processing lots of data and having a person make observations from nearby Raw data is summarized (mean, std_dev, skewness, etc..), then fed into system Accurate given enough data

New Invention? Papers have been written on location tracking using probe requests (triangulation) Possibly a new application of existing technologies: WiFi probe request tracking for lineup display Not sure if patent is possible Regardless, would like to launch pilot program very soon Full launch in September

Commercialization Advertisements Charge Businesses API Calls Place an advertisement on the interface Higher PPC because of return users Charge Businesses Setup cost is very low Reoccurring cost is even lower Can charge $100/year and provide statistics API Calls A service like Yelp or Google Maps would like real-time data Sell access to data, charge $1/100 calls

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