Results: RFID and Identity Management in everyday life - ITAS

Case #130: Apenheul
Case ID # 130, level 3
Title Tracking visitors flows through the tagged Monkey Bag
Researcher Christian van ‘t Hof
Timing 2006
Geography The Netherlands
Environment Leisure
Technology The system consists of active RFID tags sowed into the visitors bags and 11 reader/buffers
defining 10 areas through the park. The readers are stand alone, their data is downloaded weekly.
Numbers of visitors per area, time spend en speed of movement through the park are provided in
Excel and Acces spreadsheets. Visitors profiles and an overview of the total flow of visitors
emerge after analysis.
Costs Each RFID tag costs €. 25,-, the whole system about € 20.000,-
Maturity just implemented
Function Profiling flow of visitors through the park
Owner Apenheul, a Dutch zoo specialised in monkeys and apes
Maintainer Wavetrend
Users Visitors of the park
Other actors Monkeys and apes
ID issue This RFID application touches upon the issue on what is personal data and the control costumers
should have over data retrieved from their movements. The Monkey Bag RFID has a marketing
function: how do visitors move through the park and the flow of people be optimised. The visitors
remain unanimous, are not traced real time and do not receive any consequences according to
the data they provide. In that sense, the data retrieved cannot be seen as an identity that should
be managed from a user perspective.
Still, visitors are being traced without informed consent. The tagged bags are provided without
informing it’s user on the tractability. Moreover, the use of the monkey bag is obligatory. Visitors
are given a bag at the entrance with a security argument “Monkeys move freely through the park
and will try to steal your goods.” Although legitimate in itself, this rule limits free choice of the
visitors not to use the bag.
A side issue on Identity Management is that the bag is sometimes used by park hosts, to carry
food across the park. In order to keep the profiles clean, data on personnel movements need to
be erased.
Case story The Apenheul is a zoo specialised in all kinds of apes and monkeys. An outstanding feature of the
park is the opportunity for some kinds of monkeys to move freely through the crowd of visitors.
Curious as they are, the monkeys often try to steal or open bags of visitors in the hope to get a
free lunch. To prevent this, the park introduced the “Monkey bag”, a green bag with an extra clip
lock which the monkeys cannot open. This bag is obligatory, which is enforced by the
receptionists providing the bag at the entrance of the park and a warning sign.
Aside from this security reason for implementing the bag, the department of marketing added a
marketing feature to the bag: scanning visitors movements through the park. Currently about 200
of the 3000 bags are tagged. In order to provide a representative sample of visitors, the tagged
bags are handed out random, adding to 1 in 15 visitors tracked. A dataset of 90.000 readings
provided the data to analyse for visitors flows. If for example an area receives too few visitors, it
presumably needs to be made more attractive. If the area receives the most visitors, it’s probably
a hit. Also, if visitors demonstrate a pattern of “getting lost”, e.g. moving back and forth a lot
between two area’s, the directions need to be changed. Finally the overview of visitors flows can
detect congestion spots that need to be relieved. Odd routings are filtered out of the database
manually. For example tags that did not pass the first reader, only passed less than five readers
or move real fast are presumably personnel carrying the bags. In this way, the system manages
identities through differentiating between personnel and visitors.
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