ALPR is a technology category. Flock Safety is a company that offers license plate reader products among a broader set of products. The terms are related, but they are not interchangeable.

An operational guide archived by the Office of Justice Programs describes license plate reader systems without tying the category to one manufacturer. Flock Safety’s own product directory separately lists license plate readers alongside video, audio-detection, software, and other offerings.

ALPR, LPR, and ANPR

In U.S. sources, automated license plate reader and license plate reader are commonly shortened to ALPR and LPR. Automatic number-plate recognition, or ANPR, is another name for the same general technology category. A source’s choice of acronym does not identify the manufacturer.

How a manufacturer enters the map

OpenStreetMap’s ALPR tagging documentation allows contributors to add manufacturer=* and model=* when those details are known. Those fields are optional. A record tagged as an ALPR can therefore have no documented manufacturer.

PlateReaderMap groups clear naming variants for analysis while preserving the original tag. It does not identify a vendor from a camera’s location, nearby contracts, or visual resemblance alone. “Manufacturer not documented” is a statement about the source data, not proof that no manufacturer exists.

Reading manufacturer statistics

Three totals answer different questions:

  • all documented ALPR locations includes records with unknown manufacturers;
  • known-manufacturer locations excludes unknown values from its denominator;
  • documented Flock Safety locations includes only records whose source supports that classification.

Separating those totals prevents a known manufacturer’s share from being overstated. It also leaves room for records from other manufacturers as public source data improves.

PlateReaderMap is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Flock Safety.

Sources and further reading