Smart City Amsterdam hosted their latest session at Amsterdam’s DataLab last week. University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam’s Mathematics Researcher Nanda Piersma, talked about Urban Analytics and the use of historical and real time data for the city.
The Math Bit
Piersma and her team of talented students are focusing on four main areas to find sustainable, technical solutions for the city of Amsterdam. Sustainable energy, climate, logistics, and public space are all being explored, to make Amsterdam a more liveable and healthier, greener city.
Urban Analytics
So, what’s the process? Analytics processes will drive the next generation of bachelors, according to Piersma. Firstly, they collect raw data, then process it, clean the data set, explore and analyse the data, discover and verify process models, then visualise results, then finally, provide data intensive software services.
But what sort of analysis can they do? Everything from descriptive (what happened), diagnostic (why did it happen), predictive (what will happen?) and prescriptive (how can we make it happen?). Providing a plethora of multi-faceted insights into city life, behaviours, processes and more, on a broad spectrum of hindsight, insight and foresight.
Data Mining for the City
Data mining is used to measure the cities services, facilities and larger social behavioral patterns of the city’s residents. The insights from data driven monitoring can lead to data driven innovation. For example, these two unique case studies have led to insightful and positive changes for the city at large.
Case Study 1. Go electric
Measuring the use of electric vehicle charging poles. Did you know that Amsterdam has the highest density of charging poles in the world? Nearly 2000 of these smart, green energy boosters reside in the city. So, monitoring use patterns is an insightful way of discovering which parts of the city need them the most and can lead to charge pole sharing, relieving charging pole user-pressure.
Case Study 2. Watch your Waste
Monitoring household waste disposal in the city. Everything from the geographical location, to the size of the waste disposal unit, and the frequency in which it is used. This data is collected and used to improve facilities and services as well potentially creating awareness about sustainability and the environmental impact of refuse.
The Healthy City
The second speaker of the session was Jaap de Jong, Founder of De Gezonde Stad (The Healthy City, for the non-Dutch speakers), a non-profit organisation whose mission is to make Amsterdam more sustainable. They ask the question, “how can we use data to bridge the gap between data for professionals and more common citizens?”.
The core of what they do is to initiate, develop and execute projects. Their goal is to make practical things to improve city levels of sustainability, not just focusing on pilots, but really looking to its scalability in terms of becoming a functioning, sustainable business. Using the city’s data (the citizens of Amsterdam are their biggest resource), the create awareness to lead people to action.
Do you want to discover more about either of these speakers’ projects? Do you have a business case to bring forward? Get in touch with Nanda Pierson n.piersma@hva.nl, or Jaap de Jong jaap@degezondestad.org, and pitch them your idea.