The Gloucester County Board of Supervisors wrestled with the decision whether to renew the county’s subscription of Placer.ai, a type of software that uses artificial intelligence to aggregate data to determine foot traffic, during its Tuesday night meeting in the colonial courthouse.
“Placer observes the latitude and longitude of mobile devices,” said County Administrator Carol Steele. “They do not collect any personal identifiable information. The data is aggregated and extrapolated to provide visitation insights.”
These insights show the number of people who visited a particular location, providing information such as age range (beginning at age 18), which zip code they hail from and how much time people spent on average at that location. The software only begins aggregating data from locations after receiving high foot traffic, avoiding individual data collection. The data is pulled from mobile phone applications.
Steele said the county has used Placer over the past year for econom...