Optimising people flows

As urban populations grow, keeping people moving around our cities is an ever-increasing priority. Crowd management is essential for traveling safely and comfortably from origin to destination and keeping a city accessible and liveable. Royal HaskoningDHV is applying data science and its domain knowledge to alleviate the bottlenecks in mobility. Augmented by decades of expertise, we’re developing solutions that work in the interconnected mobility domain to keep people moving in cities across the world.
People in crowd

Mobility transition

Mobility is undergoing a seismic shift. The growing demand is compounded by increasing pressures on the mobility system and disruption from new technologies and behavior. This creates the perfect storm which is fundamentally changing our mobility system – and this is what we define as the mobility transition.

By bringing together cutting-edge technology with tailored strategy and expert implementation, we develop a programmatic approach to shape the mobility system of tomorrow. 

Our People Flows solution

As mobility continues to shift and change in our world today, city authorities are looking to implement effective crowd management solutions. We enable this for cities with People Flows: a human-centric design where we harness data to organise space and processes to adapt to the changing needs of inhabitants and visitors.

Optimising people flows

By bringing together cutting-edge technology with tailored strategy and expert implementation, Royal HaskoningDHV is collaborating with clients and partners around the world. Find out how our People Flows solutions have been deployed to the city of Amsterdam and work in the interconnected mobility domain to keep people moving.

Optimising people flows

As urban populations continue to grow, overcrowding in key locations can become a problem, threatening people’s safety and affecting their wellbeing. Measures need to be taken to manage the flow of people in a city to avoid putting extra stress on public spaces, infrastructure and mobility.

By combining our domain knowledge, data science and service design, we can transform insights into effective crowd management solutions – and ultimately, revolutionise the way we travel.

City skyline at sunset
City centre at night

Embracing open data responsibility

The key to an effective approach lies in connecting data infrastructure throughout the passenger journey by creating and embracing data platforms that enable interoperability. Deploying governance thoroughly ensures privacy, security and accountability.

One example of this in action is in Amsterdam. Overcrowding is a serious issue in some parts of the city at peak times. We are part of the team that developed the Crowd Monitoring System Amsterdam (CMSA) to help alleviate the pressure of crowds in and around key areas of the city which attract huge amounts of visitors, including the red-light district, shopping streets and event locations such as the Arena Boulevard.

Using mobile phone Wi-Fi signals, smart cameras and open source data, city leaders can assess the level of crowding and, when necessary, re-route pedestrians away from these areas. We have also recently become a signatory to the Tada open data programme which aims to shape a responsible digital city in Amsterdam.

People in shopping street

Combining human factors and data science

When visiting or living in a city, it is important to be able to move around freely and safely. By understanding people flows and identifying hot spots, cities can design measures to anticipate issues and proactively address them. This insight influences policy development and future planning to create liveable cities and optimise economic returns for generations to come.

By connecting data infrastructure, our expert solutions give city leaders insight and control over people flows to enhance comfort, enable safety and better manage their city via effective crowd management solutions. That results in accessible and liveable cities.

We action data-driven crowd management by identifying and predicting peaks, augmenting data with qualitative insights into human behaviour. For instance, we can analyse the effects of litter or antisocial behaviour on the safety and comfort experienced in a city. In order to create synergy between people and measures, it’s key to take measures across a city that reinforce one another and clearly define roles within the ecosystem.

Frank Legters, Director Business Unit Transport & Planning Europe, Royal HaskoningDHV:

“We’re thrilled to have become a signatory of the Tada movement in Amsterdam. We know that the promise of using data can be huge – and this ties in closely in our collaboration with Amsterdam to optimise people flows in the city centre. We must ensure that we collect data correctly and enable people to stay in control of their data so that we create responsible digital cities. Data must be tailored to the people, exist for the benefit of everyone, and we’re committed to being open about what we collect and why – that’s a responsibility which we all share and one which Tada is championing.”

Handshake on TADA