Mapping logistics traffic with an AI tool with optical character recognition

The centre of Mechelen is confronted with a lot of logistics transport every day, which is very diverse. It may involve deliveries to supermarkets, chain shops and retail outlets, construction traffic, cars delivering meal boxes to homes, and so on. The city now has limited visibility of who is driving in, what type of vehicles are involved and what kind of goods and services they offer.

This makes it difficult to identify and contact logistics players. The Mobility Department wishes to contact them to achieve the target of zero-emission urban distribution by 2030 (as set out in the Sustainable Urban Logistics Covenant). Only when the city has a good overview of the number and nature of logistics transport, can an appropriate policy also be formulated that takes all stakeholders into account.

The use of the AI tool Optical Character Recognition (OCR) offers a solution here. This involves converting an image (in this case, an image of an inscription on a vehicle) into computer-readable text through pattern recognition. In practice, this means that a computer model can read the inscriptions on trucks and vans and classify them within the correct occupational category. In this way, the Mobility Department gets an objective view in figures of who is driving in at a given point and what their type of business is.

The plan is to install several cameras with an AI-powered Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tool at the different entrances of the inner city during a couple of weeks.