Digital City
Projects

Digital Society School is an energetic training ground where creative solutions are being developed, tested and prototyped to address business and societal challenges. We root our design, tech and social innovation in the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. This unique combination offers insights and new perspectives to add innovation power to organisations. We work together with governments, businesses and citizens to help them adapt and become future-proof for the digital world.

Join forces with us now to work on the Sustainable Development Goals and explore how these can help open up market opportunities for your business. Embark on innovative projects together where we use digital technology to find effective results for the most pressing social and business challenges. Join forces with our creative and curious minds to work on challenges that your organisation faces. Develop competencies that are essential for now and the future. Learn the tools, mindset and methods that can be implemented back into your own organisation to lead the digital transformation of your business and of society. Customize or join our existing courses where we share knowledge, tools and methods to empower (your) people on their lifelong development journey. Whatever your choice is, it is bound to be a worthwhile investment towards building our digital future.

How might we automate access to a public digital ecosystem for citizens and machines in order to grow a conscious city? How might we incentivize all citizens and companies to interact with the public digital ecosystem of the city in order to improve livability, democratic representation and societal engagement?

Read our ecosystem document

Join our online ecosystem platform

#WiTNL-Women in Tech NL is the largest community and a platform for all women and girls in tech in Amsterdam and The Netherlands, We bring together Academia, Corporates and Start-Ups, individuals and organisations, women and men, everyone who is dedicated to work towards closing the gender gap in tech. We organize inspiring events, workshops, masterclasses, mentoring sessions, speaking opportunities, and many other career supportive activities. We collaborate with other initiatives, networks, tech and non-tech conferences, companies and organizations while building an eco-system that will help women in tech and female tech entrepreneurs thrive.

The project aims to demonstrate and accelerate the empowerment of citizens to become active energy citizens - and to create local energy communities via existing civil society structures - through development of new solutions (e.g. organisational) and adoption of new, emerging and existing solutions for energy ownership.

By implementing innovative smart & digital solutions, the digital perimeter allows us to experiment with applications that deliver safety & security while providing the visitor with an even better fan experience.

Please do share your comments and thoughts with us as we are currently exploring our technical options with partners within the eco-system.

Those with an interest in urban innovation topics can now discover what makes Amsterdam an innovative, smart city without the timing and logistical constraints of a guided tour. The new self-guided Amsterdam Innovation Tour enables local and international stakeholders to immerse themselves in learning about the City’s innovative projects at any time — day or night.

Amsterdam Innovation Tour app preview

In the light of the technologization and digitalization we're going through at the moment, we recognize the need to rethink urban design. Thanks to the internet, we can be anywhere we want. Thus changing the needs of a city's citizens. Additionally, smart city applications in public space raise questions regarding privacy and ownership.

5G will be the new generation of mobile connectivity. The connection will be faster and more reliable, and will bring previously unknown possibilities for citizens and business. Amsterdam is exploring the opportunities and obstacles on the road to a safe and useful 5G network. One of the ways we do this is with our field lab in Amsterdam South East, from the train station to the Johan Cruijff ArenA. But also through regional, national and international collaborations.

If data is the new gold, how can we ensure that we can all benefit from the possibilities?

Read the report about the principles of AMDEX (link)

The idea originated during the Science and Business dinner organized by Amsterdam Science Park (ASP). With Science Park’s history in the field of technological innovation and digital connectivity, the Amdex was a logical next step. As argued by Margo Keizer (ASP), "data sharing is already happening here, but at an informal level. We bring all these different initiatives together. To do this, we need to address various infrastructural and legal issues." The Amsterdam Data Exchange is an initiative to do exactly that, she adds.

Wouter Los questions: "how can we work efficiently with all this data?” With his extensive experience in the European scientific community, Los helped in the investigation of the function of the data marketplace. He explains "we want to go to an open, democratic playing field. In this model - in contrast to the monopolistic models that you now come across - the data remains from its owner and they decide which data can be shared with whom and under what conditions. We build a market model in which everyone is able to consult and use data in a transparent, familiar manner."

Chief Technology Officer, Ger Baron mentions, "since 2011, the municipality have had an open data policy. Municipal data is from the community and must therefore be available to everyone, unless privacy is at stake. In recent years we have learned to open up data in different ways.” He adds, “panorama photos, for example, are freely accessible on our data portal. In addition, we share data with market parties to find a parking space. We want to share data, but under the right conditions. This requires a transparent date market which is exactly what the Amsterdam Data Exchange can offer."

Welcome to the Black Box Bellagio - an unusual casino that won’t take your money, but is after your freedom, integrity and private data instead. Play with the (un)fairness of expected values, predicted risks, and giving up your identity. Disclaimer: The house always seems to win.

The internet services we think of as free are often paid for with our data: it is the price of access, and is used to determine our treatment and advantages. Our data feeds the algorithms which can unfairly or wrongly categorise, exclude or discriminate against us. The Black Box Bellagio uses the dynamics of a casino to communicate the asymmetry of this relationship. At this casino, like on the internet, your personal data determines the advantages you get, the luck and misfortune you experience, and how much it really costs you to play.

The Black Box Bellagio has been developed by Roos Groothuizen (1992, NL), an Amsterdam/Utrecht-based designer and artist, who cares about digital rights. Fascinated with the unfair distribution of information and how online algorithms systematically discriminate us, her work reflects on in-depth research and recent developments, often with interactive or game-like elements. The Black Box Bellagio has been realized in collaboration with Ymer Marinus and the Waag.

Film documentation from De Nieuwe Anita (May 2018), by Jimena Gauna for Waag:

The Black Box Bellagio at de Nieuwe Anita / Aftermovie

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 732546. The Black Box Bellagio is organised as part of DECODE, a project developed by 14 European partners. Through this casino DECODE aims to engage a new group of people in conversations about personal data, privacy and data commons.

Pictures by Jimena Gauna for Waag
More picture and information: Click here

Optimal use of our electricity grid

Flexpower Amsterdam

In several parts of Amsterdam we will realize a living lab in which we create a digital infrastructure (network+smart apparatus+data they collect+values), based on what is already there as well as on the needs from citizens living and or working in that area. Working together with several programs and projects like smart mobility and amsterdam crowd management, we will build a digital environment that is safe and usefull for citizen and society.

At the same time we will ask an ethical hackteam to break it, tell us how they did do that end help us to create measures to prevent breaking, taking over control by unauthorized persons/companies or anything else that is not the original purpose of the software or the hardware installed. The objective: learn what to do in order to fulfill needs of citizens in an area; learn how to create a save smart digital city; learn how to prevent and signal unauthorized access or data-copy etc.

Pavnext´s solution consists of a road pavement equipment that allows kinetic energy to be extracted from vehicles and consequently reduce their motion speed without any action of the driver and without impacting the vehicle, thus promoting road safety at locations where it is required to circulate at low speed. The energy captured is then converted into electrical energy, which is produced without associated emissions and can be used in public street lighting, crosswalks, sensors, traffic lights, charging electric bicycles or even injected into the power grid. Additionally, Pavnext also provides real-time data regarding traffic and velocity, as well as generated and consumed energy, which are sent to the cloud and later used to generate reports and to optimize energy consumption in real time, promoting energy efficiency.

We are looking for new international partners that are interested in implementing pilot plants with us, to help us validate our product and reach TRL9. Please don´t hesitate to contact us if you´re interested.

Voor dit onderzoeksproject zijn we nieuwsgierig hoe kunst kan helpen om bewoners en andere stadsgebruikers een mening te laten vormen over de slimme stad.

We doen dat in drie rondes, waarbij we steeds meer de diepte ingaan:
* De eerste ronde vindt plaats op straat; voorbijgangers worden geprikkeld om over de slimme stad na te denken door middel van kunstinstallaties en onzichtbaar theater.
* Ronde twee vindt plaats in buurthuizen; bewoners en andere stadsgebruikers worden gestimuleerd om een mening te vormen over de slimme stad.
* Ronde drie vindt plaats bij het NEMO Science Museum en brengt bewoners in gesprek met slimme stadsmakers, zoals technologieontwikkelaars en beleidsmakers.

Daarbij hebben we steeds drie vragen:
* In hoeverre helpen de kunstinstallaties en theaterstukjes om de slimme stad relevant te maken voor deelnemers? Wanneer ervaren deelnemers het als leuk en belangrijk om een mening te vormen over de slimme stad?
* In hoeverre helpen de kunstinstallaties en theaterstukjes deelnemers om de verbeelding te stimuleren? De slimme stad is voor veel mensen een abstract begrip. Hoe kan kunst helpen om de slimme stad tastbaar en bespreekbaar te maken?
* In hoeverre helpen de kunstinstallaties en theaterstukjes deelnemers om gefundeerde mening te vormen over de slimme stad? wat helpt deelnemers om niet alleen een mening te vormen, maar ook van zichzelf te begrijpen waar deze mening vandaan komt?

We onderzoeken deze vragen op een kwalitatieve manier, namelijk door middel van observaties en interviews. De publieksactiviteiten vinden plaats in Amsterdam tussen september 2018 en januari 2019.

Legal and financial challenges that are experienced in France and the Netherlands when developing sustainable projects in the built environment.

City-zen was an international consortium, a program stimulating learning-by-doing in Grenoble and Amsterdam between March 2014 and November 2019. The results can be found in a booklet or in detailed reports. http://www.cityzen-smartcity.eu/home/reporting/deliverables/

Summary report

Full report

As part of the TechConnect action programme, a number of initiatives are being launched to increase equal opportunities in the tech sector by making related study programmes and tech jobs accessible to everyone. In practice, this means that thousands of women, people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods and owners of SMEs will be trained to become coders, data analysts, growth hackers, UX designers or tech administrators.

For more information, visit the website: <https://techconnect.city/>

The energy consumption of data centres in the EU is predicted to reach 104 TWh in 2020. With the continuous infusion of IT services in our daily lives and the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), distributed data centres and the cloudification of the legacy computer systems this number should come as no surprise. And energy is indeed a precious commodity. As such, to ensure sustained availability, reliability and security of Europe’s critical infrastructures, data centres should reinforce their investments towards energy efficient business innovation and successfully lead the on-going energy transition. Taking up such a pivotal role will bring opportunities for energy efficient data centres to not only reduce their operating costs and improve their performance and efficient use of resources, but also create new revenue streams through waste energy reuse and energy flexibility services offerings.

The City of Amsterdam is exploring the opportunities of a city wide, open beacon network. Currently 200 beacons are installed on almost all bus- and tram stops in the innercity. This is a first step. At this current stage, we want to involve app developers in the use case exploration for such a network.
We would like to invite you to test the open beacon network, and find out what kind of opportunities arise for your business.

Join the Google Group <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/amsterdam-open-beacon-network> to get instant access to the Amsterdam Open Beacon Network and start using the beacons by adding your attachments in your own namespace.

The Marineterrein was keen on developing a living lab for new technology and smart city use-cases. Lightwell helped to realize this ambition by combining its Friso Kramer public lighting fixtures with the most promising Smart Lighting technology available: LoRa.
The LoRa technology is a point-to-point internet of things communication system that uses the free available 868mhz frequency. At the Marineterrein Lightwell and technology partner Ziut decided to use a private (non telecom) network to secure its open-source character but also to guarantee the lifespan of the system. This is interesting for large metropolitan area's if they have smart city ambitions because the availably of the network is more secure if the City runs its own network and isn't solely dependent on a network-provider like a telecom-company. LoRa technology is therefore a future-proof system to which al kinds of features (censoring, lighting etc.) can be added.
The whole system set-up is on show at the Marineterrein. The 42 fixture can't be missed because of the beauty of the design by Friso Kramer.
During the We Make the City event 20-24 June 2018 tours will be held to explain the system functionalities.

Project SmartRoof 2.0 is an innovative, lightweight, blue-green roof, that has been installed on Building 002 at the Marineterrein Amsterdam. Water management (blue) and plants (green) are carefully monitored using sensors. This provides a wealth of information.

Water is essential for plant growth. That’s why the blue-green roof features an 85 mm-high Permavoid hollow drainage layer that stores rainwater directly under the planted layer. These Permavoid units have special fibre cylinders that use the capillary effect to provide the plants with water during dry spells. This creates natural irrigation without using pumps, hoses, or energy: just like in nature.

About Marineterrein Amsterdam:

At Marineterrein Amsterdam, solutions to global issues are devised, tested and put into practice. Here, a leading international community of innovators, scientists and businesses work together toboost and build upon the strong international position held by both Amsterdam and the Netherlands. The Marineterrein is going to be a future-proof city district featuring open innovation, accessible and flexible living and working space, unique housing, sports, recreation, and greenery.

Current sensors:

Sensortype Aantal

Regenmeter 1

Infraroodcamera 1

oppervlaktetemperatuur 2

Bodemvocht 14

Bodemtemperatuur 14

Waterhoogtemeter 6

Luchttemperatuurmeter 10

Windrichting en -snelheid 1

Zonnestraling 1

Zonlichtreflectie 3

Lysimeter (verdamping) 3

Relatieve luchtvochtigheid 1

Totaal 57