Influencing people using data
After the COVID, we can visit concerts and events again. Great that it is possible again! The last thing you want is delays on the journey or when parking is full. We can prevent this by using data to predict crowds and entice people to make smart choices.
The provinces of North Holland and Flevoland, the Municipality of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam Transport Region jointly looked for a solution to prevent crowds and tempt visitors to choose a different time, means of transport, route or location. The relevance and complexity appealed to the CROMAS consortium (Sweco, PTV, TomTom, Scenwise, Kinisis and Vinotion) to work on this together.
What is CROMAS?
CROMAS (Crowd Management System) is our system that can display and predict crowds in an area in a multimodal manner. We use open data supplemented with data from our partners, such as real-time car traffic information from TomTom. If necessary, we collect additional data, for example through smart cameras that count GDPR-proof pedestrians and cyclists. If the customer has data himself, we also use it.
Predict and influence
If it is getting busy, a trigger goes off in the dashboard. We determine the limit value together with the customer after discussions with various stakeholders. If it threatens to become too busy, we inform and advise visitors and travelers via social media and messaging facilities.
We influence travelers by sending messages to travelers before, during and after the trip about where and when it can be busy. We provide advice for quieter times to travel, which locations are easily accessible or to come by public transport or bicycle if we expect traffic jams.
Use of CROMAS
This chain solution can be used to tackle crowd management together with several government agencies. This is possible in highly urban areas such as around the Johan Cruijff Arena if there are multiple events at the same time. In (recreational) nature parks or at medium to large events. In October 2022, CROMAS carried out tests at Walibi Fright Nights.
Several stakeholders can then log in to our dynamic dashboard at the same time. Police, security, municipality, province and in this case the Walibi amusement park can see for themselves where it is or will become busy and what opportunities there are for spread. This makes it a lot easier for them to coordinate who will take which measures and what they can do together. The various scenarios are of course already on the shelf. A decision can therefore be made in a split second, where everyone can work from one comm operational picture.
“We use open data, supplemented with data from our partners and customers. Stakeholders such as the police and governments obviously already know some of the data. But seeing this data combined in one overview is new. The reactions to this are not in terms of “nice or great” but simply necessary to do the job well. In that respect, CROMAS is already proving its added value in the operation.”
