Research projects

On this page, you can find an overview of the Centre for BOLD Cities' current projects. Please visit the project pages for more detailed information on the projects and team members.

Digital Twin Rotterdam harbour

Urban Digital Twins

The Team Science project Urban Digital Twins (3D data-based representations of the city) asks how inclusive these are for the diversity of people, experiences, and politics in the city. A digital representation cannot, by definition, capture the diversity of urban life and experience. The research…
Car dashboard

Using vehicle data to motivate and incentivize sustainable mobility behavior

This PhD-project focusses on the motivation for sustainable mobility behavior among premium customers of the BMW group and acceptance of sustainable mobility in the area of tension between public interests and individual needs. Self-determined mobility plays an important role in the lives of…
Digital start-up workers

Beyond the Silicon Valley story: An ethnographic approach to the discursive production of smart innovative cities 

The worldwide proliferation of smart city initiatives, incentives and programs to support innovation and tech entrepreneurship, incubation and co-working spaces, and platform-based services appear to attest to the global spread of a Silicon Valley-inspired version of our cities. Rather than assuming…
Woman in front of data dashboard

The use of big data by frontline bureaucrats in the social domain

The welfare state is currently undergoing a transition toward data-driven policies, management, and execution. This has important consequences for frontline bureaucrats in such a 'digital welfare state'. Until now, the impact of data-driven tools on frontline officials has been mainly described in…
Drone

Social acceptance of Urban Air Mobility

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is a new way of urban transportation that involves moving people and goods by air in an urban environment. Vera Safronova, a junior researcher at LDE Centre for BOLD cities, carried out a research project to investigate the social aspects of urban air mobility under the…
Image of surveillance camera (susviews)

Citizen perspectives on smart urban safety

How do people perceive, experience and react to smart urban safety imaginaries and everyday environments? Smart city applications in the domain of public safety management (short "smart urban safety") are all around us, but are often unknown to the citizens of a smart city. In order to study citizen…
Collage Afrikaandermarkt

Data Empowerment Design Studio #2 - A more democratic, inclusive and resilient Afrikaanderwijk 2040

In this project Emiel Rijshouwer (Erasmus University) and Els Leclercq (Delft University of Technology) organised and hosted a Data Empowerment Design Studio in which a wide variety of stakeholders partook to co-creatively develop imaginaries of a more democratic, inclusive and resilient…
Tablet

From smart to political: Local councils in/and smart city decision-making

BOLD Cities believes it is important that citizens and administrators are able to understand, assess and manage the digitalization and the use of (big) data in municipalities. The local council is perhaps the most important link between citizens and administrators, and therefore has a crucial role…
DEDS

Data Empowerment Design Studio #1

What problems and opportunities do residents see when it comes to societal challenges? And how does (the use of) data come into play when we address these issues? In this project, BOLD Cities researchers team up with citizens and local initiatives to discuss these questions and develop new ideas.
Robot Rosie

Robot Rosie Minor Research Project

Robot Rosie Pilot Robot Rosie is a pilot of 6 months. This self-driving robot will deliver groceries at the Erasmus University Rotterdam / campus Woudestein to employees, students and residents at the campus. The pilot is aimed at exploring the acceptance and acceptability by campus users as well as…