Smart City Monitor

The Smart City Monitor project (2021-2023) aimed to make the inner cities of 's-Hertogenbosch and Breda more attractive, accessible, healthy, vital and sustainable through innovative data-driven products and services. The project developed an integrated platform providing real-time and long-term insights into visitor and traffic flows in city centers, enabling evidence-based policy decisions for urban mobility, parking management, and public space optimization.

The initiative brought together six partners from business, education and government: the municipalities of 's-Hertogenbosch and Breda, Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS), Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas), Argaleo and Geodan. The project originated during the COVID-19 pandemic when both city centers—economically strong areas before the crisis—were severely impacted by lockdowns. Even after restrictions lifted, visitors were hesitant to return. The Smart City Monitor was initially deployed to show people when it was safe, healthy and attractive to visit the city centers again, with public safety authorities using real-time data to monitor crowding levels.

The project established a comprehensive data infrastructure integrating multiple sources: parking operators (Q-Park, municipal providers), public transport (Arriva, NS bike-sharing), shared mobility providers, camera counters (ViNotion), laser and radar counters, and visitor flow sensors. This data was visualized through interactive Digital Twins—3D city models showing real-time parking occupancy, pedestrian flows, cycling patterns, and traffic conditions. Advanced analytics enabled scenario modeling to assess the impact of policy interventions on mobility patterns, sustainability and economic vitality.

BUas led the translation of policy objectives into measurable indicators and actionable insights. Through structured workshops with mobility planners, traffic engineers and economic development officers, we developed frameworks linking policy goals (sustainable mobility, visitor distribution, healthy vital inner city) to concrete indicators and required datasets. This co-creative approach ensured the platform addressed real practitioner needs rather than being a technology-driven solution looking for problems.

A key innovation was the development of seven event-specific "data stories" combining multiple data sources into integrated narratives. For Carnival 2023, we tracked how parking patterns, pedestrian flows, and public transport usage changed when both cities communicated "city full" messages via social media, demonstrating how data could inform operational crowd management decisions. Similar analyses were conducted for Jazz Festival Breda, shopping evenings, and other major events. These stories transformed complex multi-source data into accessible visualizations that municipal staff could use for tactical and strategic decision-making.

The project demonstrated strong educational integration, involving 143 students across four modules. Students contributed to data collection, developed user experience research on city center attractiveness, and created promotional materials encouraging platform adoption among municipal staff. Two interns conducted systematic lessons-learned analyses, while five students developed "Work smarter, not harder" videos to overcome user adoption barriers—recognizing that delivering technology alone does not guarantee usage.

Beyond monitoring, the project revealed critical insights about the relationship between parking provision, modal choice and visitor spending. Analysis showed that pedestrians have almost double the monthly economic value of car visitors, primarily because they visit more frequently. This evidence directly informed policy discussions about parking management and low-car city center strategies. The platform also exposed data quality and accessibility challenges—not all mobility data sources were publicly available, affordable or of sufficient quality, highlighting the need for municipalities to develop strategic data partnerships.

The Smart City Monitor demonstrated how systematic data collection, stakeholder co-creation, and practitioner-oriented visualization can transform urban mobility governance from intuition-based to evidence-based decision-making in medium-sized cities.

Societal issue
Medium-sized city centers face a critical challenge: they must simultaneously recover from COVID-19 economic impacts, transition to low-car and zero-emission zones for climate and livability goals, and compete with both larger cities and suburban centers for visitors and economic vitality. Municipal decision-makers lacked real-time and historical data to understand visitor flows, parking patterns, and the relationships between accessibility, sustainability and economic activity. This resulted in policy decisions based on intuition rather than evidence, risking measures that could either fail to achieve climate goals or inadvertently harm economic vitality. The data infrastructure needed to support evidence-based urban mobility governance was fragmented and inaccessible.

Benefit for society
The Smart City Monitor provided municipalities with integrated data infrastructure and decision-support tools that transformed urban mobility governance. Real-time dashboards enabled evidence-based crowd management during major events, directly supporting public safety and visitor experience. The platform revealed that pedestrians have double the monthly economic value of car visitors, providing robust evidence for low-car policy discussions. Seven event-specific data stories demonstrated how parking management, public transport provision, and public space design jointly influence visitor behavior and spending. The educational integration approach trained 143 future urban professionals in data-driven planning methods. The project established replicable methodologies for translating policy objectives into measurable indicators and actionable insights.

Collaborative partners
Gemeente Breda, Gemeente 's-Hertogenbosch, Argaleo, Geodan, Jads.