Smart City Project: Bruges - Leuven - Roeselare
In 2021 the cities of Leuven, Bruges and Roeselare decided to join forces and combine their data on one platform – big news, since combining data on a large scale, between different cities, has not been done before in Belgium. Six other Belgian cities and municipalities have shown interest as well and might join the platform in the future. By largely sharing data across city borders, cities can generate added value for their citizens and companies.
Requirements of the BLR project
The cities of Bruges, Leuven and Roeselare decided to share knowledge and data concerning important issues every center city is facing. Themes such as mobility, safety, durability, livability, local economy and citizen participation. These cities did however have some specific requirements when launching the tender for the Smart Data Platform.
The platform had to be:
FLEXIBLE – SCALABLE – ROBUST– GDPR APPROVED – OPEN – INTEROPERABLE – MONITORED – EVOLUTIONARY – SECURE
Compliant with VLOCA’s architecture
To answer to this tender, we have joined forces with CEGEKA into a consortium called Urban Sense. The platform we developed is entirely compliant with the flemish VLOCA architecture (Vlaamse Open City Architectuur). This implies that cities eager to join this future-driven platform, but who already built their own individual platform, according to VLOCA’s standards, can still easily join. The VLOCA architecture makes sure these different platforms are intero
Technicalities of the project
Platform:
- VLOCA architecture
- OSLO open data standards
- European open data standards
- KPN Data Services Hub
Specific Sirus components:
- Context Broker
- Fact Store
- User Management
- Supplier Management
- Open Data Portal
- Device Management
- Data Lake
- Data Harmonization
Timeline
November 2019
January 2021
April 2021
September 2021
January 2022
The Urban Sense Data Platform is based on VLOCA’s architecture, combined with OSLO & European data standards. The technological backbone of the Platform is determined by the KPN Data Services Hub (DSH). The architecture is completed with specific components developed by Sirus.
Discover what we can do for your Smart City!
Onboarding Use Cases
By setting up specific cases on the platform once, other cities can easily join in when they install similar smart solutions in their city. When Bruges decides to follow Leuven’s example and installs noise meters in its city, they don’t need to pay further onboarding costs, their data is almost automatically added to the platform instead. This provides important cost-saving benefits – one of the main generic requirements for the platform.
An example of a Use Case: noise measurement in the city of Leuven
One of the first cases being onboarded on the platform was the Use Case of the city of Leuven. The city wanted to measure the noise in specific areas and try to solve the noise pollution in these specific zones so inhabitants of these parts would sleep more peacefully. Since noise pollution is a difficult issue which is hard to control and can be very subjective, the city of Leuven decided to implement Munisense noise sensors to map out the nightly sounds in the city. By analyzing the different types of noise, it is possible to change the intensity of the street lightning in real time so noisy student who come back from a night of partying are subtly nudged towards more positive – and quiet – behavior.
Because this Use Case is now onboarded on the Urban Sense Platform, other cities can implement this light nudging in their city as well. This way, Urban Sense wants to invest in best practice sharing and motivate cities to learn more from their combined insights.
What can my city gain by joining this data platform?
Cities generate tons of structured and unstructured data each day. The diversity of this data makes it very complex to acquire the necessary insights needed to support decisive policy making. In order to handle this data more efficiently, Urban Sense is therefore applying a pragmatic approach. First, we figure out which of a city’s data is relevant, where and how to connect this data and how to present or visualize this data. We make sure this data is safely connected, onboarded and enriched with contextual data. Lastly, we make this data interoperable via our Context Broker.
This pragmatic and clear approach ensures that we can fully help cities and reassure them that they have sight on all of their needed data and that they have an efficient way to make use of this data. Furthermore, cities are always completely aware of the setup-, user-, and maintenance costs of the platform. Our project managers, data experts and service desk are always ready to assist you with any questions.
City Wireless
Environment
Waste management
Parking
Urban mobility
What's next?
Bruges, Roeslare and Leuven have some exciting times ahead. When all goes well, other cities might join the platform as well and the BLR project could get even more exciting.
What the client thinks about the case
What's next?
Bruges, Roeslare and Leuven have some exciting times ahead. When all goes well, other cities might join the platform as well and the BLR project could get even more exciting.
Discover more about our Urban Sense Data Platform
Urban Sense is a consortium between Sirus & Cegeka. Cegeka, being one of Belgium’s largest IT providers with a strong focus on Smart Cities’ mobility, interoperability, customer service and helpdesk support and Sirus being the expert in Smart City data solutions formed an alliance to build a Data Platform for cities.
Smart City Project
At Sirus, innovation is at our core. We strive to help build the Smart Cities of the future, and the cities of Bruges, Leuven and Roeselare are now part of this innovative future. We are proud to be a part of this collaboration, and if you are to – be sure to follow us on LinkedIn for updates!
Interested to be a part of projects like the Smart City Project for Bruges, Leuven and Roeselare? Learn more about Sirus’ Smart City Approach and don’t hesitate to take a look at our careers page!