www.bureauit.org/sbox -> www.bureauit.org/sbox/
product bureau VERTICAL MOTION TRIGGERED VIDEO The bit Suicide Box is a motion detection video system designed to capture vertical activity. Unit includes BITcamera, motion capture card, analysis software and utility concealment casing. In standard operation any vertical motion in frame will trigger the camera to record to disk. Bureau installed the Suicide Box for trial application in range of the Golden Gate Bridge California 1996;
System efficacy: Suicide Box system supplied public, frame-accurate data of a social phenomenon not previously accurately quantified. Box placement was determined to exploit cultural climate and BIT agent proximity; San Francisco is gateway to the Silicon Valley and both Information capital and Suicide capital of the USA.
TRANSCRIPT bit: bureau of inverse technology presents the SUICIDE BOX the following report produced by bureau operatives in San Francisco, assigned to install and test new data acquisition equipment - SB17 this video contains suicide test footage and analytic data information follows. The bureau is developing a motion analysis system SUICIDE BOX - patent pending - a motion detecting video camera and digital equipment installed in range of THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE, San Francisco USA. This vertical motion triggered device is designed to capture a video record of all falls from the bridge. The resulting footage records as a continuous sequence the trickle of people who jump off the bridge. There are approximately 4-8 bodies retrieved per month by the coastguard. Bureau observation estimates that up to 50% of falls go unnoticed by the authorities - more information follows. THE BRIDGE PROBLEM San Francisco remains unchallenged as the premiere suicide destination in the United States. The Golden Gate Bridge attracts visitors from as far away as Japan. In 1994 as part of a seismic retrofit the bridge was rigged with no less than 76 motion sensors to record violent ground shaking in the event of an earthquake. Certainly we are witnessing an explosion of electronic monitoring. HISTORICAL PRECEDENT Since the bridge was completed in 1937 millions have been drawn the the structure, strung elegantly 220 feet above the water. An average of 17 people per year have jumped to their deaths from the span. AUTHORITATIVE RESPONSE The Building and Operations Committee last year rejected proposals to install a taller barrier on the east side of the bridge and mount 8 surveillance cameras. "I think we've come to an engineering dead end" said bridge director Virginia Simms, amidst concerns that building a higher safety barrier would mar the aesthetics of the Bay Area's signature attraction and merely relocate the suicide venue. New crisis phones installed on the span have received 6 calls but none of the callers wanted to be transferred to the crisis line. Conversely the number of astronauts to have died from space since 1967 is 17. STATISTICAL VERITABILITY The last recorded suicide off the span was the 997th. Since that June 5 1995 death California Highway Patrol officials have stopped counting fearful that publicity surrounding the milestone might trigger the next jump. Newspaper reports of the 1000th death in July 1995 were dismissed by police as "an approximation". "Nobody really knows for sure" said CHP spokesman Steve Kohler. In addition to the jumps there were 72 reportable incidents last year alone in which someone either threatened to jump or was taken in for wandering around the bridge looking suspicious or despondent. THE SCALE OF THE PROBLEM Length of bridge: 8940ft - Bridge speed limit: 45mph - Speeding Penalty: $160 - Fall: 240ft - Duration: 4 seconds - Vertical velocity: 75mph - Impact: substantial - Survivors: 26* * this number counts only once Hannah Reich who survived the fall twice. SUICIDE TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS Suicide detection in low visibility is difficult and coupld compromise accuracy. The bureau will incorporate neuromorphic sensors into this application to enable night and low light suicide detection. This experimental component consists of a focal plane array analogous to the human retina and is capable of capturing scenes containing very dim and very bright components such as the bridge at night. THE SEAGULL FACTOR Excessive triggering caused by unanticipated seagull interference inititially disabled the SUICIDE BOX in test deployment. SBOX DATA TEST 171 This has been corrected with recalibration of the horizontal field sample information. TRAGIC DATA IN THE INFORMATION AGE Quarterly data captured by the box will be indexed to the Dow Industrial Average. Inverse proportionality is predicted and may provide concrete measure of civic morality and character in the population. Indexing the public healthcare budget to the bit data is further expected to amplify the digital sediment. MARKETING The BIT SUICIDE BOX is available for your drastic application. The bureau maintains rights to all data produced by the box. DISCLAIMER The bureau is an information agency servicing the Information Age. The bureau records non-specific suicide and other data margins.
The following review is an annotated excerpt from the engineer's report Commissioned by the bureau after initial public release of the data on video. The bureau plans further research and development of this information product that will be funded by the sale of the data generated. The 100 test days of the second deployment period captured 17 events, averaging a rate 017suicides/day. This compares to the 013 rate calculated using Port Authority data averaged over the last two years. Assuming that the weather has neither positive nor negative effect on likelihood of jumping; that in San Francisco conditions of poor visibility can be more then 60% of total time; and that likelihood of jumping is equal from all parts of the bridge; this brings the suicide rate closer to 068 suicides/day and suggests that the estimated rate of this phenomenon in the previous accounts is too small by a factor of 4 Using this projected figure and a mid-range value of life estimate (that is, the National Highway and Transport Safety Authority figure used in the cost-benefit analysis of the 55 mile per hour limit legislation of $500,000 dollars per life) we can recalibrate the rate of loss in economic terms as $182- $238 per day. This is less then 1% of the revenue generated at the toll gates. However, there are a number of ways to interpret the data. To provide an evaluate of the Bureau1s method we need to compare to other data sources. While there are other databases that provide correlates to the suicide rate, such as those used in life insurance calculations, there is none known that has the capacity to store video images of their source statistical data. Why this is the case is an open question but can probably be attributed to data storage convenience and expediency of calculation. The Bureau has not only produced a method for the consistent collection of video enhanced comprehensive data and the proprietary algorithms to capture and store the information, but has done pioneering work to index this data to market indicators. This provides the possibility for this information to be integrated into the daily economic concerns, incorporating it into the micro attention that market indicators receive. The first application of this data, is the opportunity to characterize the value of suicide. Legislators using cost-benefit analysis to decide between policy options on death averting and public safety measures, are currently divided between the 'willingness to pay' and the 'human capital' (or foregone earnings) approaches. The willingness-to-pay measure is derived from estimates of how much individuals are willing to pay to reduce their probability of death by small amounts, while the 'human capital' measure is based on estimates of the present value of foregone earnings due to premature death. Surveys used to capture willingness-to-pay typically yield values of life from $50 thousand to $8million. Using the BIT SUICIDE BOX data, a robust and market responsive value of life can be calculated, using essentially an inverse correspondence of the value of suicide. ...
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