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Taipei smart lavatory to double as emergency call center

Chloe Liao, Taipei; Willis Ke, DIGITIMES Asia

A Taipei park has kicked the official use of Taiwan's first smart public lavatory allowing citizens to experience IoT-backed smart living, and the lavatory will double as an emergency call center in the next stage to enhance night safety for citizens, according to Spencer Liang, chairman of Flowring Technology playing a role in the project.

Liang said the smart lavatory mainly relies on the support of IoT and cloud management technologies, with sensors utilized to detect the usage volumes of tissues and hand cleansers as well odors such as heavy ammonia before reminding service staff to do the replenishing and cleaning jobs.

Liang said the sensing technology is just a basic application of IoT, but the smart lavatory project has attracted great attention from various sectors, with the Environmental Protection Administration even asking his company to help promote similar projects to other places in Taiwan.

The pilot smart lavatory in the Daan Forest Park will be connected to the police systems later to become also a night emergency call center to better safeguard park visitors at night, according to Liang.

The pilot project will also gradually incorporate AI, big data analysis, as well as facial recognition, user flow recognition and dangerous behavior recognition applications in the future, Liang stressed, adding that the most valuable part of the project is the backend use of the accumulated data for more efficient management.