Every outside door
Main entrance, side entrances, the door from the car park — together they give the building figure.
People counting in public buildings
Capacity limits from fire safety rules, several entrances and a data protection officer who will ask where the image goes. How people counting for public buildings answers all three — on the cameras, without a cloud.
- Visitor counting: government office, town hall, citizens’ office
- Occupancy limit: fire safety rules kept visible
- Counting at several entrances, public sector ready
Town hall, all entrances
212
of 350 permitted
Main door148Side door41Car park23
Context
The situation
Town halls, citizens’ offices, job centres, courts and libraries share three conditions. The building has a permitted maximum from its fire safety concept. Visitors arrive through more than one door. And any camera project goes past the data protection officer, often also past the staff council and the IT security team.
A counting system for this setting has to keep to the occupancy limit for fire safety, add up several entrances and prove that no personal data is created. Station buildings follow the same pattern; they are covered under passenger counting at stations.
Counting points
What gets counted and where
Halls and floors
Council chambers, event halls or waiting areas with their own limits become zones. Queues at service counters are measured by Vicodis Queue.
The information desk
Staff see the live figure and the traffic light on a screen or tablet.
Products
Which Vicodis products are involved
| Product | Role in a public building |
|---|---|
| Vicodis Visitor Counter | Counts at each door, on every camera |
| Vicodis Zone | Adds the doors into one figure with one capacity limit |
| Full-screen live view | Shows the traffic light on a screen at the entrance or the desk |
Purpose
What the data is used for
The live figure keeps the building within its limit — how that works is explained in occupancy monitoring with a live capacity limit. The history answers the questions councils and managers ask.
- Fire safety: the permitted maximum stays visible.
- Service planning: staffing desks at the busy hours.
- Reporting: visitor numbers per day, month and year.
- Opening hours: which hours are actually used.
On site
Installation notes for this environment
Public buildings often have wide, step-free entrances, glass fronts and revolving doors. Count behind the revolving door, where people walk straight; use the camera’s wide dynamic range where daylight comes through glass.
For the data protection officer: the image never leaves the camera, and only counts are stored — the reasoning is on people counting and the GDPR. For procurement: regulatory classification of an anonymous counting system.
- Count behind revolving doors, not inside them
- Wide entrances: higher mounting or two cameras
- Glass fronts: wide dynamic range, avoid direct sun
- A short notice at the entrance
FAQ
Questions from public bodies
01
Can several entrances share one occupancy limit?
Yes. Each entrance has its own camera, and a master camera with Vicodis Zone adds all crossings at the outside doors into one building figure. The traffic light follows that figure, so every entrance shows the same state. Inner doors between halls move people between zones without changing the building total.
02
Does the counting need approval from the data protection officer?
Your data protection officer should see it, and the architecture makes the review short. The image is analysed inside the camera and discarded; only counts are stored, and no data leaves the building. We provide a description of the data flow for your records on request.
03
Can the figures be used in reports to the council?
Yes. The dashboard shows visitors per day, month and year, and any period can be exported as CSV or PDF with the location, device ID and period in the header. Vicodis can also email a monthly report to the administration through your own mail server, without anyone having to log in.
How many visitors does your entrance really have?
Tell us your camera model or your project — we check compatibility and come back with a concrete proposal.