On Tuesday 27 February, Allinq Digital organised the Elfsensorocht at the Bouw & Infra Park in Harderwijk. An informal gathering with a serious message for participants from various government segments: there is already a lot of data available, use it! That’s how to improve services to citizens.

In sectors such as construction, infrastructure and telecom, the use of smart sensors is now commonplace. And for Allinq Digital’s staff? Every day. With our lessons learned, others can also benefit. That was the approach of the Elfsensor Tour. The participants took a tour of practical applications. Along the way, there was plenty of time for a good conversation with, of course, something tasty to eat and drink.

The motto of the day was: to measure is to know. But: knowing is not necessarily also understanding. You have to consider the future. After all, you don’t know what data you can use later. In other words: create the value today that you need tomorrow. This can be done with the technology that is already in wide use, for example in construction.

A hot topic for both the public and private sectors is energy management. An important motivation for our customers to use smart sensors. They provide very detailed insight into energy consumption in a dashboard. From there, you can read trends that allow you to optimise energy use.

A related application of sensors is measuring heat stress. Climate change puts this topic high on the government’s agenda. Measuring temperature differences gives more insight into the living environment in inhabited areas. And that in turn forms the basis for well-founded policy.

Another interesting application is improving land quality. Again, relevant for both construction and government. An example: sensors can measure nitrogen in great detail with the aim of preserving biodiversity. This is traditionally done with soil samples. That takes time. Sensors can provide the same information in real time.

The Elfsensor tour passed several posts. At one of the posts, you saw how to use existing (public) data to make good analyses, in the case of heat stress, for example. What emerged? To make the most of data, it is not at all necessary to make huge investments. In practice, there is often already a lot of data and models available, only they have never been analysed in conjunction.

There was a lot of inspiration. In the spontaneous conversations during the tour, many possible applications for the government came up – from mobility to energy. The main difference with the cases from the business world is the motivation. For the government, the focus is not primarily on the financial return on investment, but on what it delivers for the citizen, and how it can contribute to better policy.

One of the posts in the Allinq Lab linked to this. WeCity (in which Allinq participates) assists the government in data processing by unlocking digital solutions in public spaces. Participants could use VR glasses to virtually see how much is already possible. Already 65 practical solutions can be viewed in this Metaverse!

Do you also work at a (semi-)government agency? And do you also want citizens to benefit thanks to policies based on smart data? Then get in touch with Jasper.