SHIELD

In SHIELD (Safety Hub for Innovation and Exploration to Learn from Digitalization), a number of different innovations from the Dutch national police and the municipality come together that contribute to the safety in the city of The Hague. Think of detecting drone flights, crowd management with open data sources and the automatic detection of shipping traffic in the port.

SHIELD’s  largest project is the Crowd Safety Manager (CSM) in which they use crowd data to monitor and predict crowd behaviour, threat points, and congestion. The CSM comes in the form of a 3D map and a digital twin that shows how busy an area is at a given time and the level of congestion heading to that area. The system uses both open source data from sources such as GPS data and from closed data sources in and around the target city.  Moreover, in 2023, the police and the municipality will start a number of new projects in SHIELD. For example, an experiment is being set up to detect (illegal) drone flights in The Hague and research is being conducted into the smart and privacy-friendly exchange of data from camera images.

The goal of SHIELD is that other cities and units in the Netherlands also benefit from the knowledge gained. Experiences are shared through the Impact Coalition Safety & Security. This national collaboration between municipalities, police, knowledge institutions and companies is supported by the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) and Security Delta (HSD).