Building a smart society

The Future City Foundation is the first smart city network in the Netherlands that focuses on the demand of the city. It is an initiative of companies and governments that want to stimulate the exchange of knowledge, ideas and solutions between technology professionals, administrators and urban developers. Situated in the space between all the different actors, bridging the gap, we are in essence a movement of communities.

The Future City Foundation is also a FIWARE iHUb. FIWARE is a composite framework of open source platform components to accelerate the development of smart solutions. Their mission is: ‘to build an open and sustainable ecosystem around public and implementation-driven software platform standards that facilitate the development of new smart applications in multiple sectors.’ For further information visit www.fiware.org

Bringing together citizens, industry, science and policy is a potent mixture for innovation. The key being collaboration between all these actors, using all available knowledge, while not reinventing the wheel. A prerequisite for successful collaboration is transparency. This is our point of departure for the projects we are engaged in.

Projects overview

Communication partner:

• [ENG] SCOREwater –  A H2020 Innovation Project which focuses on enhancing the resilience of cities against climate change and urbanization by enabling a water smart society.
• [ENG] UPWATER – A Horizon Europe project which focuses on assessing the effectiveness of different measures that are deployed to prevent groundwater pollution. (starts in November 2022)
• [NL] LIVE – An ERDF/REACT-EU project which focuses on giving municipalities the tools to support them in the decision-making process when it comes to redesigning the public space. 
• [NL] Crowd Safety Manager – An experimental project with a datadriven digital twin for crowd management at the boulevard of Scheveningen (The Hague). In a consortium of the city of The Hague, the National Police, research institutes and companies we learn from this project. 
• [NL] Generieke koppeling data- en kennisinstrumenten aan 3D-omgevingen (translated: Generic API data and knowledge instruments to 3D environments/digital twins’) – In this project a generic API is developed to connect data and calculation models to digital twins of urban environments, to increase the quality of spatial plans for area development and to promote the participation process with residents.

Initiator & process management

• [NL] City deal ‘Een slimme stad, zo doe je dat’ (translated: A smart city, this is how you do it) – A community of 65 companies, national, regional and local governments, academia and social organizations, who aim to change at least 12 processes that design, arrange, manage and govern regions, cities and villages; so that the opportunities offered by digitization and technology can be optimally exploited. 
• [NL] City deal ‘Slim Maatwerk’ – If we want to solve the complex, multiple problems of the social domain, we must use the latest techniques. Together with 26 partners we focus on innovating, implementing and continuing at least 8 different processes where digitization and technology can have a positive effect within the social domain. 

Projects description

SCOREwater

SCOREwater is a EU Horizon2020 research and innovation project, working towards a smart water society. It’s main mission is to connect governments, universities, urban developers and technology professionals within the water society to develop and test water-smart digital solutions and best practices to strengthen cities’ resilience. The project started in May 2019 and will continue until April 2023.

SCOREwater vision is to link the physical and digital world for city water management solutions. To reach the ultimate goal to play a part in solution for climate change and urbanization, addressing several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the new Urban Water Directive.

Three demonstration cities

SCOREwater focuses on enhancing the resilience of cities against climate change and urbanization. The three demonstration cities, with their varied climate and social conditions, cover most of the city typologies in Europe. Therefore, they are good places for the SCOREwater validation.

The demonstration cities are: Amersfoort (Netherland), Barcelona (Spain) and Gothenburg (Sweden). Each city has their own focus, however the data gathered across all cities will be gathered in one, central location: the SCOREwater data market. It will combine heterogeneous data from various sources into easy to use API’s by harmonizing and standardizing the metadata and data, publishing them in an easy to use data market.

The Amersfoort case focuses on flood prevention and climate resilience. The Gothenburg case focuses on water-safe infrastructure projects. And the Barcelona case focuses on resilient sewer systems through sewer sociology. Read more about these cases by clicking on them, or download the yearly overviews (PDF): year 1, year 2, year 3.

LIVE

The LIVE project is a joint effort to address issues relating to quality of life, sustainability and climate adaptation. The aim of the project is to give the municipality the tools to support them in the decision-making process when it comes to redesigning the public space.

The approach is to further develop various products and services from the geo businesses (dealing with geospatial data) involved, which will come together in one single virtual 3D environment (digital twin). This environment will be developed, tested, and used within the neighbourhood Liendert in Amersfoort. Amersfoort is a Dutch city in the centre of the country with +- 160.000 inhabitants, of which 8.000 are resident in Liendert. This neighbourhood is particularly interesting, since it will get redeveloped in the following years.

The LIVE project is co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Kansen voor West II, and REACT-EU as part of the European Union’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

City Deal A smart city, this is how you do it 

In 2019 the partners that make up te Future City Foundation wrote the booklet ‘Een slimme stad, zo doe je dat’ (A Smart City, This is How You Do It). This generated a lot of attention and ultimately led to the the City Deal aptly titled ‘A Smart City, This is How You Do It’.

The Dutch Ministry of Interior has asked to set up a community of companies, governments, academia, citizen movements and other organizations, so that the entire quadruple helix is represented. Since 2020 65 partners signed a so called City Deal (a program connected to the EU Urban Agenda). In this City Deal, we aim to change the processes that design, arrange, manage and govern regions, cities and villages; so that the opportunities offered by digitization and technology can be optimally exploited. The participants in the City Deal will make every effort during the term of the City Deal to change at least 12 processes, to safeguard these processes, to implement them, and to achieve upscaling. This is done from existing practice, so that the developed solutions are demand-driven and not supply-driven.

In the City Deal we also developed a toolbox for the smart city. It contains practical tools that you can use directly in making your region, city or village smart. This toolbox is freely accessible to everyone. If you know or developed a tool, please let us know.

The City Deal is implemented by Future City Foundation at the request of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations in collaboration with the G40 city network.

City Deal Slim Maatwerk

Unfortunately, not every Dutch person is able to live independently and healthily in their desired home environment, even though they want to. In the City Deal ‘Slim Maatwerk’ (translated: Smart Customization) we want to investigate which solutions digitization and technology can offer for this social problem.

In this City Deal we want to change at least 8 processes, in which we want to investigate what possibilities digitalization and technology can offer to solve complex problems for and with these people, so that they can be an active part of society again.

For this City Deal, the City Deals ‘Eenvoudig Maatwerk’ and ‘A smart city, this is how you do it’ have joined forces. Both City Deals are an initiative of Agenda Stad of the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. By combining forces, networks and knowledge, they hope to make a real difference. The Future City Foundation, the Social Domain Programme and the G40 city network are working closely together on the basis of these existing City Deals.

Crowd Safety Manager

Crowds and unpredictable groups of people are increasingly causing annoying, undesirable and even life-threatening situations in a city or area. Situations that we can now mainly react to after the incidents. The National Police and the Municipality of The Hague are therefore investigating how digital technology and data can be used to take appropriate measures before and during crowds. In this way, we hope to be able to prevent unwanted events and disturbances instead of having to solve them. 

One of the main goals of this project is to create and test the Crowd Safety Manager. This solution should support the municipality and the police. It is a solution that allows us to map out where crowds will arise, so that groups of people in different areas can easily be guided in the right direction. It is a solution that offers more opportunities to prevent undesirable events and to better deploy the police and BOAs. This should improve safety on the streets.

Read more on https://crowdsafetymanager.nl/

Generieke koppeling

In this project a generic API is developed to connect data and calculation models to digital twins of urban environments. Knowledge institutions such as the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) have various calculation tools at their disposal that can calculate spatial measures on the basis of, among other things, the health effects. However, this knowledge is not always readily available to municipalities. By linking this knowledge to 3D planning environments that municipalities already use in the design process, the expected effects are made visible early on in the planning process. In addition, 3D visualisation is expected to make a positive contribution to the participation process, because it is more in line with the experiences of inhabitants.

The project focuses on two cases in the city of Amersfoort and the city of Zwolle. Linking calculation tools from the RIVM to digital twins of Tygron and ESRI. This makes it possible to design spatial plans in 3D and to calculate, for example, the effects on health, house prices and cooling. By making an generic API, more data and calculation instruments can eventually become available within 3D planning environments. 

Our partners