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Recap CityFlows Webinar #2: Big Data and IoT for Crowd Management

From:  Cornelia Dinca (AMS Institute)
Last edited: 20 October 2020

On Tuesday, October 13, the second CityFlows webinar took place with a focus of big data and IoT for crowd-management. The webinar consisted of two presentations from CityFlows project partners followed by a short discussion.

Did you miss the webinar? If so, you can watch the recording below or via https://vimeo.com/472202552


Here’s what you missed…

The first presentation was by the Barcelona team consisting of Jordi Ortuno from the Municipality of Barcelona; Maziar Ahmadi from University Polytechnic of Catalonia; and, Chloe Cortez from CIMNE. Their presentation introduced the CityFlows living lab pilot at Segrada Familia.  The goal of the pilot is to improve monitoring and management of tourist flows in this very touristic spot. In designing this pilot, several technologies were considered before selecting passive RFID tags for their privacy-preserving properties.  While providing several advantages, the selected RFID technology also poses several challenges and limitations which were addressed by Maziar Ahmadi.  Ultimately, the project team is working to integrate the passive RFID tags into the public transport tickets which are often used by tourists to visit the location of interest.  For the remainder of 2020, the design of the pilot will be validated, with the full test being carried out in 2021.

The second presentation was delivered by Pierro de Sabatta and Mauro Annunziato from ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development.  Pierro and Mauro introduced the Polis-Eye project, which uses machine learning and forecasting models to reduce tourist peak-flows at three locations.  The project focuses on the integration of data sources by creating correlations between the flows of pedestrians at targeted locations with other relevant data sources.  A key challenge lies in integrating data sources from different organizations, which is why the ENEA team is working toward a strong interoperability standard. An interoperable solution provides several key advantages, including the possibility to avoid lock-in over a specific company or technology.

The two presentations were followed by a short response by Eelco Thellier from the City of Amsterdam and a brief discussion moderated by Dorine Duives from TU Delft.  Among the points discussed was the importance and complexity of multi-stakeholder collaboration in data-driven projects.


There are two additional CityFlows webinars scheduled until the end of 2020. Join us for one or both of these webinars:

  • Tuesday, November 3, 15:00-16:00 CET: Management at Train Stations & Multimodal Hubs
  • Tuesday, December 1, 15:00-16:00 CET: 5G Applications for Crowd Management

Are you a practitioner or researcher working on a relevant crowd management project and would like to share your work and findings with the CityFlows network? Send a short email explaining your project to CityFlows Communications Officer, Cornelia Dinca via cornelia.dinca@ams-institute.org.