✦ DriveByView encampment & graffiti watch

Catch it in days, not months.

Partner vehicles already pass the corridors, underpasses, greenways, and lots where encampments and graffiti tend to appear. DriveByView turns those everyday passes into an early, reliable signal when something new shows up — so outreach teams can connect people to services sooner, and cleanup happens while it's still a small job. Every watched zone keeps a dated visual record: when it appeared, how it changed, and when it was resolved.

This product detects conditions and places — a new tent, a fresh tag — never people. AI blurs every face and plate; no one is ever identified, profiled, or followed. Data is owner-only, nothing is public. How we protect everyone →

What this is — and isn't. DriveByView tells you that a condition appeared at a place: a new tent or structure at a watched zone, fresh graffiti on a known wall. It never identifies, profiles, or follows any individual. It exists so responses happen early and well — outreach connects people to services sooner, cleanup happens in days instead of months, and small situations don't become entrenched ones.
Two watches, one network

Early signal on the two conditions that get harder every week you don't know.

New encampment detection

Watch known hot-spots and the likely new sites — the underpass two blocks over, the treeline behind the lot. When a new tent or structure appears at a watched zone, you get an alert on the next pass, with annotated frames.

Each site gets a week-over-week timeline: growing, stable, or cleared — so planning is grounded in what's actually there.

Why early matters: when a site is days old, outreach can connect people with services before it becomes established — and your team plans calmly instead of reacting to a months-old situation.

New structure — first seen Tue Week-over-week: stable Site cleared — confirmed

Graffiti watch

New tags get flagged on the next pass, with before/after frames your removal crews can work straight from — no site visit needed to scope the job.

Rapid removal is the proven deterrent: the faster a tag is gone, the less it comes back. An early signal is what makes rapid removal possible.

Chronic walls: track the walls that get hit again and again over time — see whether your removal cadence is winning, and where a mural or design change might pay off.

New tag — flagged this pass Before / after frames ready Removed — clean 3 weeks
How we built this responsibly

It watches places and conditions. It never watches people.

A tool near a sensitive topic has to earn trust with rules, not intentions. These aren't settings — they're how the product is built:

  • Detects conditions, not people. The AI looks for tents, structures, and tags — and faces and plates are blurred on every frame, always, before anyone sees a thing.
  • No identification, ever. No facial recognition, no person-tracking, no profiles. There is nothing in the system that connects a detection to an individual.
  • Owner-only. Reports go to your verified account — the subscribing city or organization. Nothing is public, nothing is browsable, and there is no feed for anyone else.
  • Built for response, not enforcement optics. The product is designed to trigger services, outreach, and cleanup. Pair alerts with your outreach protocols — the alert tells you something appeared; your people decide what a good response looks like.
  • Community accountability. Retention limits and the same opt-out and privacy promise as every DriveByView product apply here too. Read the full privacy promise →
Read the full privacy promise
AI baseline per watched zone

It knows what each zone looked like last week.

Every watched zone — an underpass, a greenway edge, a chronic wall — gets its own learned baseline from repeated passes. When a pass shows something new against that baseline, the change is flagged with annotated frames, and your protocol decides the response.

Expected look
1 change detected — new structure at the treeline edge

Trainable conditions

Beyond automatic change detection, train the AI on the conditions your teams care about — it checks every watched zone for them on every pass.

⛺ New tent or structure 🎨 Fresh graffiti 🛒 Accumulating debris + Your own condition

Alert → annotated frames → your protocol decides. The system tells you what appeared and where, with the frames to prove it. Whether that triggers outreach, a cleanup crew, or a wait-and-watch is entirely your call, under your protocols.

Download the one-pager

Request a pilot

Bring an early signal to your corridors.

Tell us about your organization and the areas you're concerned about. We'll follow up to scope a pilot — typically a handful of watched zones on routes partners already drive.

No addresses of individuals, please — this product watches places, not people.

Prefer email? Write us at support@drivebyview.com.

Common questions

Fair questions, straight answers.

Is this surveillance of homeless people?
No. The system detects that a tent appeared at a place — never who is there. Faces are blurred on every frame, there is no facial recognition or person-tracking anywhere in the product, and no data about any individual exists to collect. It was built so the response can be early and humane: outreach teams connecting people to services in a site's first days, rather than an entrenched situation months later.
Who gets the data?
Only the subscribing organization, through its verified account — and subscribing teams are outreach, parks, and public-works organizations, not law enforcement. Reports and frames are owner-only: nothing is public, nothing is browsable, and nothing is shared with third parties. Retention limits and the DriveByView privacy promise apply to every frame.
Can residents see it?
No. There is no public map, feed, or app for this product. Everything goes only to the subscribing organization's verified account, for use under its own protocols.
How fast is detection?
A new condition is flagged on the next partner pass through the watched zone — typically within days, since partners already drive these corridors regularly. Your dashboard shows exactly when each zone was last passed.

Small situations should stay small.

An early, reliable signal is what turns months into days — for the people at a new site, and for the crews who keep public spaces working.

Request a pilot