The Crowd Safety Manager (CSM), the crowd management application on our Digitwin platform that we developed together with TU Delft and the City of The Hague, has grown from an innovation pilot into a structural tool within the city’s coastal action plan (Actieplan Kust). That is what the City of The Hague writes in a publication on Smart City The Hague. The next step is already visible: from measuring to forecasting.
From pilot to a fixed part of the coastal action plan
On busy summer days, visitor numbers at Scheveningen rise quickly. For the coastal action plan, a clear view of those crowds is essential: what is happening now, how did the situation develop over recent weeks and what can be expected? The CSM started in 2022 as an innovation project at Scheveningen and has since been further developed in and with daily operations into a fixed part of the way of working along The Hague’s coast.
The tool combines different data sources into a single picture of crowds and visitor flows, and by comparing data across multiple years, patterns and developments become visible. Expected crowd levels can prompt the preparation of scenarios and the timely organisation of measures. This provides a better basis for deploying people and resources around accessibility, liveability and safety. The CSM is now also used more widely, including at Prinsjesdag, the Invictus Games, the Tour de France Femmes and the Life I Live festival.
From measuring to forecasting
The current situation is central to the CSM, but extensive experience is now being gained with forecasts. By connecting historical data, current conditions and other relevant factors, the tool looks ahead to expected crowd levels and accessibility. Those expectations are taken into account in the considerations within the coastal action plan.
Forecasting is emphatically a learning process. By continuously testing forecasts against reality, it becomes ever clearer which factors influence visitor flows and how forecasts are best interpreted. Not only do the models evolve, the users’ knowledge grows as well, and with that the reliability of the insights increases step by step.
Crowd scenarios in the CSM: forecasts for parking and visitor numbers
Privacy-friendly by design
Privacy and responsible data use have been guiding principles in the development of the CSM from the start. The tool mainly uses public, aggregated and privacy-friendly data sources that provide insight into crowds and accessibility without individual visitors being identifiable. That approach reflects how we build all our crowd management solutions on the Digitwin platform, from The Hague’s coast to festivals and King’s Day.
Read the full publication (in Dutch) at Smart City The Hague.
Forecasting crowds in your city or at your event?
The CSM runs on the Digitwin platform and can be deployed for coastal areas, city centres and events. Curious what real-time insight and forecasts could mean for your situation? We are happy to show you.
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