Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency
Technology presence
What these categories mean
- ANPR
- Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR): camera systems that automatically capture, read, and log vehicle number plates with location and time, producing a searchable record of vehicle movements.
- Fixed cameras & RTCC
- Agency-operated fixed video cameras and the real-time crime centers (RTCC) that aggregate live and recorded feeds for monitoring.
- Face recognition
- Software that matches faces in images or video against a reference database to identify or verify individuals.
- Drones / UAS
- Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), commonly called drones, operated by an agency for overhead observation, imaging, or sensing.
- Gunshot detection
- Networks of acoustic sensors that detect and locate suspected gunfire and alert an agency.
- Body-worn & dashcam
- Officer body-worn and in-vehicle dashboard cameras that record encounters; public access to the footage is frequently restricted.
- Doorbell & camera registry
- Programs that give an agency access to privately owned camera footage: doorbell-camera partnerships, citizen camera registries, and private-camera integration platforms.
- Cell-site simulators
- Devices that mimic cell towers to locate or identify nearby mobile phones. They are often called Stingrays, or IMSI catchers after the international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) number that identifies each phone on a network. Adjacent: communications surveillance outside the visual/sensor core.
- Predictive policing
- Software that forecasts where crime may occur or who may be involved, to direct policing. Adjacent: analytics rather than a sensing deployment.
- Social-media monitoring
- Tools that collect and analyze public social-media activity for an agency. Adjacent: open-source/communications monitoring outside the visual/sensor core.
The record
Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency runs automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) at its average speed safety camera sites, using Redflex Halo 2 cameras that match plate images between two points on a road to calculate a vehicle's average speed for speeding enforcement; 17 sites were listed nationwide as of 2026, beginning with Matakana Road in Warkworth. Waka Kotahi separately operates more than 1,600 traffic and safety cameras across the state highway network overall, per a 2022 nationwide census of publicly owned cameras.
Sources: NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi, Average speed safety camerasNZ Herald, The roads across New Zealand where latest tranche of average-speed cameras will be found (17 Mar 2026)NZ Herald, The streets have eyes worth millions - but does that make them safer? (28 Apr 2022)
Source: the public record. New Zealand Police and government publications, council tenders, and council Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA) responses; per-entry citations on each record · retrieved July 2026