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AMS Institute, Re-inventing the city (urban innovation) at AMS Institute, posted

Traffic intensity before, during and after intelligent lockdown measures in the Netherlands

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In March our government introduced measures to slow down the spread of COVID-19. As expected, this resulted in a decrease in traffic on highways. But, what does this look like? We compared 3 Tuesdays; before, during, and after the rules were loosened.

Check out this visualization, for which our Data Visualization Lab took a deep-dive into the open data of the National Data Warehouse for Traffic Information (NDW): https://www.ams-institute.org/news/traffic-intensity-during-and-after-intelligent-lockdown-measures-netherlands/

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AMS Institute, Re-inventing the city (urban innovation) at AMS Institute, posted

Urban Living Lab Summit 2020: Meet over 150 international Living Lab practitioners

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In many innovation projects, scientific programs, and organizations, urban living labs are achieving good results. In this co-creative, interactive Urban Living Lab Summit, we are going to explore tools that are used and ways to standardize them.

During the Summit - Monday, June 22nd, from 2 to 6pm (CET) - we will address:

● What tools can be used for designing, measuring impact, collaborating, and learning within Living Labs?

● How have these tools been proven helpful for living labs to reach their goals?

● What are lessons/insights that have been learned by living lab practitioners during this Corona crisis?

Want to know who's speaking? Or how to register? https://www.ams-institute.org/events/urban-living-lab-summit-2020/

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AMS Institute, Re-inventing the city (urban innovation) at AMS Institute, posted

Social Distancing Dashboard provides roadmap for city dwellers

With growing numbers of pedestrians and cyclists returning to city streets, keeping a safe distance of 1.5m can be a challenge in many urban areas due to the way public space (or lack of it) has been designed.

The Social Distancing Dashboard, a project led by scientists from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), in collaboration with the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute), helps to raise awareness about constraints posed by the design of public space and contributes to decision making for COVID-19 related interventions in urban planning.

The Dashboard creates city maps that show on a street and neighborhood level if social distance rules can be respected when moving in public space. It offers an overview of different factors – such as the width of the footpath and location of bus stops – affecting our ability to respect social distancing rules.

The dynamic and color-coded maps are open access and available for use by e.g. policymakers, charged with making decisions on public health and city planners, tasked with making COVID-19 related interventions in the urban space. The dashboard is also intended to raise awareness amongst city residents – especially those in risk groups – who want to navigate the city streets as safely as possible.

Read the full article here: https://www.ams-institute.org/news/social-distancing-dashboard-provides-roadmap-city-dwellers/

Or go straight to the Social Distancing Dasboard: https://covid19.social-glass.tudelft.nl/#14/52.3722/4.88072

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AMS Institute, Re-inventing the city (urban innovation) at AMS Institute, posted

Week of the Circular Economy #3: Building bridges from flushed toilet paper

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Imagine biking over a bridge made out of paper we flush down the toilet in the City of Amsterdam? Every year, up to 175.000.000kg of cellulose-rich toilet paper can be sieved by wastewater treatment plants in the Netherlands. What if valuable resources like the aforementioned could be re-used by the construction sector?

Currently, BAM Infra Nederland, NPSP, Technische Universiteit Delft, ChainCraft B.V. and our Research Fellow Peter Mooij investigate how a "bulletproof" bio-based 100% circular material - from combining cellulose and bacterial glue extracted from wastewater - can be best applied by the construction sector. Click here to read the full article: https://www.ams-institute.org/news/can-we-build-bridges-paper-we-flush-down-toilet/

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AMS Institute, Re-inventing the city (urban innovation) at AMS Institute, posted

How to tackle climate challenges in cities?

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With temperatures of about 12 - 15 °C today, the Netherlands currently is not the "Winter Wonderland" you'd expect this time of the year. Usually, it would be around 6 °C.

Heavier rainfall and storms, higher temperatures, rising sea levels, and other climate change consequences impact urban areas worldwide, and cities are looking to adapt to the challenges involved.

Due to increasing urbanization, the number of people having to deal with challenges like the aforementioned is also growing. As a result, Amsterdam, like most cities, has to find solutions to limit the impact of climate change to ensure the quality of life and its resilience. The City of Amsterdam is aware of this and is committed to becoming climate-neutral by 2050.

To foster this ambitious goal and connect the objectives to the state-of-the-art knowledge from science, our Climate Resilient Cities research program works on a few different areas of expertise. In short, the entire urban air-water-soil-green system in and around Amsterdam is evaluated.

Curious what measures we design to help cities become climate-resilient? Click here to view our infographic and read our long read: https://www.ams-institute.org/news/how-tackle-climate-challenges-cities/

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AMS Institute, Re-inventing the city (urban innovation) at AMS Institute, posted

How could technology make scan cars more human?

Technology like big data and smart sensors can help solve urban challenges. But when collecting data in the city, what public values are involved? Exploring new applications, like scan cars, helps to grasp the complexity of Responsible Urban Digitization.

The scan car as a use case
One example of sensing technologies used in cities are “scan cars”. These vehicles are equipped with sensors to collect data on the urban environment. Scan cars are becoming increasingly smart to improve efficiency and help the municipality to carry out tasks – from parking policy enforcement to waste registration.

But apart from making the city more efficient and clean, we question and explore what public and democratic values should be embedded in the implementation of these scan cars. For example, with regard to their purpose of urban data collection, could scan cars be designed in a way that make them (more) transparent, understandable or even contestable by citizens? In other words, what features could make these vehicles more “human”?

This November, together with UNSense, we invited representatives from the City of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, TADA and researchers from TU Delft to join us for a 3-day sprint to design “the scan car of the future”, that also looks at the human and fair values of the advances in technology. Continue reading this article here:

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