After Iceland, back in the Netherlands again and, as promised, a bit more information from this part of the world.
It certainly is not just Amsterdam that is active in smart cities. In this article I will point to some 40+ local councils in the Netherlands that are providing smart city information. Setting an example for other countries, these 40 cities share a common data platform. This saves costs and makes a lot of sense in relation to user friendliness and standardisation.
For this purpose the Dutch company 2CoolMonkeys has made its big data platform freely available to organisations in the Netherlands who want to share their data.
The portal allows cities (and others) to publish data easily and securely. Cities can link their data to a licence or an API key. Cities can also provide the company with their file with the correct metadata.
More than 40 cities in the Netherlands are using this platform and are making their data available to their citizens on their own dashboard.
The individual smart city apps of these local councils are full of information; while all cities provide different data sets of information many of them show, for example, train delays, energy consumption, twitter messages and current water levels. The offered data is visualised user-friendly via infographics, maps, message lists etc.
While the information is in Dutch it is still interesting to have a look at the smart city home page of the 40+ cities: http://smartcityapp.nl/
Rijkswaterstaat (The Ministry for Infrastructure and Water Management) is using the same platform to provide useful information on the state of the many waterways that traverse the country, which of course is very relevant to the Low Country.
The app provides information about the waterway junctions, freight and tourism routes, where the bridges and locks are situated (and, if applicable, their state, maintenance, etc) as well as water levels and navigation information on the Dutch waterways. It is also possible to plan a sailing route from A to B, or to check the current waterways and waterway blockages on the route.
Again, the information is in Dutch, but for those interested it is worthwhile to use Google translate and to view the maps: http://vaarwateren.nl/index.php
Relevant information is also accessible through VR Glasses, using the Google card box option. Bar charts, line graphs, maps, 3d maps and pie charts are also available to enhance the user experience.
Paul Budde