The City of Copenhagen has just launched an innovative program aimed at tracking down stolen bicycles.
The program is called “Få en lille chip på” or “Get a little chip on” and involves handing out 5000 free RFID chips that Copenhageners can put on their bicycles in order to participate in the pilot program that will run until May 2010.
The chips are placed inside a red reflector, which is installed on the bicycle. You have to register to take part - name, address and email.
There is a small army of people walking about the city everyday with the enviable job of irritating motorists. We call them Parking Attendents. :-) They are on the sidewalks of the city writing out parking tickets anyway so they will now be equipped with an RFID scanner so they can walk past parked bicycles, scanning happily as they go.
If their GPS-equipped scanner registers a stolen bicycle, you will immediately recieve an email with a map featuring a red dot where your bicycle was found.
I will continue to post observations, inspirations and anything else that I come across in the city or online which may be relevant to urban computing, one of the domains of my final project
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[...] The City of Copenhagen has just launched an innovative program aimed at tracking down stolen bicycles. Using RFID tags you will be able to track where your bike is if it is stolen. Read the full story on Adam’s Blog. [...]
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