Smart City,

Smart Canals

Mario Kortman | Mobile Convention Amsterdam | 23 mei 2013

What does

Waternet do?

Everything

water

So how’s

Waternet doing?

They’re clean

But busy

With business

The number of boats on the Canals has doubled in the last decade

Tourboats

Commercial

Houseboats

Private

Now approx: 19.000

Few in number, but touring over 3

million passengers every year..

And

Public Management

Has transformed

Into the management of complex and interconnected systems

City Policy Goals 2020:

• More and a more diverse use of the canals

• But greener, more balanced and with minimal traffic congestion

• While building on its unique value to Amsterdam

Goal:

To change how we use and manage

the Canals

• We want our App to be a non-intrusive everyday dashboard

• And we use the site to communicate with you about your experiences or our

policies

We developed a platform

• As a world-first our sensors detect a boat’s speed, direction and length

• And they are busy: some are counting over 1500 boats a day

And installed 17 sensors

Enabling users to go out and explore

• Users can get everywhere without sailing knowledge as the GTA inspired

navigation helps them navigate to our or their Points Of Interest

• It’s mechanism is adepted to water, so users navigate routes from buoy to

buoy instead of agressive turn by turn instructions

Becoming part of their everyday use

• Logging trips helps users keep track of their routes and gas usage, so the

Dashboard becomes a regular part of their sailing trip

• The App enabls them to meet up with their Facebook friends and share their

routes for them to use, integrating with their social life on water

Helping them to make informed decisions

• The App provides information specific to a boat profile and location and

enables users to adept their routes to our realtime TNO traffic data

• Which helps them to enjoy their trip, and us to be effective at our crowd

management

Working together changes the dynamics

• We are able to evaluate and improve our measures using forecasts generated

by the TNO traffic model and their feedback

• And sharing this knowledge helps establish objective facts in the public debate

concerning our policy proposals

Benefiting both

• As users geotag debris, dangerous situations or sunken boats they help us

keep our canals clean and safe

• Happens to be yours? Using the RFID chip on your boat we can send users an

alert in the App, instead of being forced to tow it away and send a fine

On a robust platform

• The platform must remain to function when it matters most, especially on

days like Queensday 2013 with bad 3G connectivity

• And be able to handle (a lot) of privacy sensitive data that we base our

policies, staffing and services on

Results: well, it’s one day old :)

Kickoff project

• 1 december 2012

Version 1 live:

• 18 April 2013

Version 1.2 (traffic)

• 22 May 2013 (yes.. yesterday)

But:

• The App achieved free publicity in all major Dutch newspapers on launch,

spurring 10.000 users to download it in the first 10 days (55% of our target

audience)

• And approximately 35% of the boats on the canals registered an active

session in the App on Queensday

Some tips

Use specialists

Know what you want

• Toss away ‘mobile first’ and think user-centric by creating something

that is relevant to their goals and specific to their situation

Expect feedback

• Users tend to have a (strong) opinion about what you do and why

you do it. And in public management, they’re youre boss.

Save yourself some stress

• Don’t plan to realise this for your own Canals in under 5 months.

Thanks!

Let’s connect:

@mkortman

linkedin.com/in/mariokortman