CLE groups work together to develop cameras utilizing AI to slow illegal dumping

CLEVELAND — Illegal dumping is off to a fast start in the City of Cleveland in 2023, but so is the city in its effort to combat the chronic problem with the development of surveillance systems utilizing artificial intelligence.

The city has teamed up the Cleveland State University and Case Western Reserve University through the Internet of Things, or IOT Collaborative, to create a deployable smart camera system that will recognize illegal dumping as it’s taking place and report it to law enforcement.

The development project has been made possible through funding from the Cleveland Foundation.

Nick Barendt, CWRU executive director for the Institute for Smart, Secure, Connected Systems, told News 5 field testing on the systems will take place in the coming months.

“How do we harness technology, but make sure we’re doing it in a way that serves the public interest, said Barendt. “How do we improve the operational capabilities of these sorts of systems and reduce the false positives.”

Mark Durdak

Barendt said his team is gong to create a corridor on one of the campuses that can be used as a controlled test bed.

“Where we can drag boxes or furniture or whatever into the field of view and make sure we can detect those,” he said. “You’re detecting things coming into a cameras field of view, that the don’t leave the field of view within some reasonable amount of time. There’s going to have to be some privacy by design considerations, as well as signage and other things that we’re going to have to put up.”

Mark Durdak

Brian Ray, Cleveland State University law professor and director of the Center for Cyber Security and Privacy Protection, told News 5 the team is working to create smart cameras that won’t create neighborhood privacy issues.

“We don’t want a ‘big brother’ society, but we do want to get rid of illegal dumping,” said Ray. “We want to make sure that enforcement is efficient, but also make sure…