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Why is Shanghai using surveillance cameras and AI to monitor its autumn trees?
- City authorities have come up with an elegant and hi-tech solution to the problem of managing its popular seasonal displays
- A ‘defoliation index model’ more accurately predicts the extent of fallen leaf litter, easing the burden on sanitation workers
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Shanghai has turned to hi-tech surveillance technology to manage the city’s “unswept fallen leaves” campaign, which aims to preserve an autumnal aesthetic on a select number of its streets.
Surveillance cameras – traditionally used for security purposes – have been trained on the canopies of trees in nine of Shanghai’s 41 landscape roads, while an AI algorithm uses the data to calculate the timing and volume of leaf litter they are likely to produce.
Fallen leaves have been left on selected landscape roads from November through December in Shanghai since 2014, and have become an iconic autumnal attraction, with residents and visitors savouring the season’s visual poetry.
But the campaign also attracted criticism, with the burden for managing the leaf litter falling on the city’s sanitation workers.
A Sixth Tone report in 2020 said the ambiguous cleaning standards had added to the workload of sanitary personnel who had to “spend more time sprucing up the fallen leaves”.
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Autumn colours on show as leaves change on trees across China
Autumn colours on show as leaves change on trees across China
Shanghai’s low-level government officials were in a dilemma: to sweep or not to sweep?
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