A sensor in the road surface can tell you more than whether it is slippery. But anyone working with data at a municipality knows how it goes in practice: every application has its own dashboard, exporting is often impossible, and every new policy question means collecting data all over again. The City of Helmond, together with KPN and Argaleo, tackles this at the source: data from different systems comes together safely and in a controlled way in the Digitwin, making it usable for every challenge, from winter maintenance to heat stress.
Every application with its own dashboard
Data-driven working is not new to Helmond. The city has been working with smart traffic lights, sensors and digital models for years. But in practice, that meant a separate dashboard for every application, logging into five systems for one question, and data that never leaves the supplier’s system. Anyone who wanted to combine things was left cutting and pasting in Excel, or hiring a consultancy to do it.
And the questions keep multiplying. By 2040, Helmond will grow to around 115,000 residents, with some 15,000 new homes, busy traffic, grid congestion and climate change. To respond, the municipality wants to make better use of the data that already exists.
‘One of our questions was how we can use the sensors we already have for multiple challenges.’
Wiebe Quekel, Urban Innovation policy officer, City of Helmond (translated from Dutch)
A secure gateway for data
That is where the KPN Data Services Hub comes in. Sensor data from connected suppliers is made available through this hub, with KPN ensuring that different formats become available in a uniform way. Helmond keeps control over the data the municipality shares through the hub: via the platform it decides which parties get access to which data. For the policy officer this means one place to request data, instead of arranging per supplier what has to come from where.
Quekel also sees value in preserving historical data. It allows the municipality to reconstruct later which information underpinned a decision. That contributes to a reliable and transparent government, because it remains clear how and on the basis of which information choices were made.
A universal power strip for the Digitwin
For us, the hub works like a universal power strip. Sensor suppliers work with different connections and formats; through the KPN Data Services Hub, the sensor data always reaches us in the same way. We then use that data in the Digitwin: a digital representation of the city in which sensor data, public sources and municipal data come together.
This makes individual measurements visible in their context. A temperature says little on its own; combined with homes, trees, roads and places where many people gather, the information becomes usable. The uniform access also saves the municipality manual work. One supplier’s dashboard currently lacks an export function, leaving Quekel’s colleagues retyping data by hand. Through the hub, that data will soon flow directly into the Digitwin and other applications.
Helmond’s Digitwin: sensor data, public sources and municipal data in one view
Road sensor maps heat stress
Heat stress illustrates what this approach can deliver. The sensors in the road surface measure temperature, traffic and road conditions, among other things. A municipality can use this data to support winter maintenance, but that same measured road temperature also helps with a completely different problem: heat in the city. In the Digitwin, the temperature is combined with information about trees, buildings and the places where people live or spend time, supplemented with public, aggregated neighbourhood-level figures on vulnerable groups and satellite imagery.
This shows the municipality where many people are exposed to high temperatures. That helps determine where extra trees, shade or cool places are needed most, map cool routes, and later measure whether interventions work. For the civil servant fielding a council question about heat, that saves an entirely new study: the answer comes from data that already exists. Ultimately, we do all this to improve residents’ quality of life, exactly what we work on in other municipalities as well.
No more starting from scratch
The technical connection between the sensors, the KPN Data Services Hub and the Digitwin is now up and running. The next step is to embed the applications in daily working processes together with municipal departments. Helmond wants to break the pattern in which every issue produces a separate study or external report that is outdated within a year: the analysis stays in place and simply keeps calculating with current data. Faster, more integrated, data-driven decisions.
The approach has been designed for broader use from the start. New sensor suppliers can deliver data through standardised connections, without needing a separate dashboard for each supplier. We can reuse the connections and analysis methods for new applications, and other municipalities can take the Helmond approach as a starting point and adapt it to their local situation.
‘We need to build a foundation for a new way of looking at the city. If this catches on and spreads, we all accelerate together.’
Wiebe Quekel, City of Helmond (translated from Dutch)
Jeroen Steenbakkers (Argaleo) and Wiebe Quekel (City of Helmond)
Curious how data could make the difference for your municipality?
Together with KPN and the City of Helmond, we are organising a session (in Dutch) in which Wiebe Quekel shares more about this approach. Register your interest via KPN and you will receive an invitation. Rather see right away what the Digitwin could mean for your city? Book a demo or get in touch.
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Together with the City of Helmond and KPN, Argaleo brings sensor data, public sources and municipal data together in the Digitwin. The same road sensor now supports both winter maintenance and heat stress analysis.
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