Case Study: Thornhill Smart Village (Stirling) 

• Client: Stirling Council & Thornhill Smart Village network

• Location: Thornhill, near Stirling, Scotland

• Theme: Community Air Quality • Smart Village • Analytics

• Tech: Surround 3D LiDAR sensor; online dashboards (CiiM), privacy-preserving classification

Overview

Villages near Stirling formed a smart village network to understand local air quality. Thornhill, on the busy A84 to the Trossachs, sought traffic context to interpret pollution levels. Digiflec worked with Stirling Council to add movement intelligence alongside existing AQ and weather sensors.

The Challenge

• A steady mix of haulage, commuter, tourist, and agricultural traffic passing through a small village.
• The network needed objective traffic data to relate vehicle presence to air-quality readings and weather conditions.
• Any solution had to be privacy-safe and simple to share with the community.

The Solution

Digiflec installed a single surround LiDAR unit to capture:

• Vehicle counts through the village,
• Category classification (cars, vans, buses/trucks) based on size/shape (no personal data),
• Speed and direction to profile flows by time of day and direction of travel.
• Data fed an online dashboard, adding clear traffic context to the network’s AQ findings.

Outcomes and Impact

• Whole-community access: Data published on a shared dashboard for residents, schools, and partners.
• Actionable baseline: In January 2022, 75,104 vehicles were recorded, split into cars, vans, and buses/trucks – a transparent baseline to compare with AQ and weather.
• Privacy by design: Classification used geometry only (no faces/plates), supporting GDPR compliance.
• Path to net zero: The approach highlights practical, community-centric applications of LiDAR to support cleaner, safer rural roads.