Urban Digital Duplicate: Real-time online data modifications as a daily, practical city assistance
Menden's Smart City Project: A Step Towards Urban Resilience
Menden, a city in Germany, has embarked on an ambitious project as part of the "Model Projects Smart Cities" initiative. Funded by the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Building, and the KfW, this project aims to enhance the city's resilience and daily decision-making processes.
The project, named "Tree Sponsors," invites citizens to take responsibility for watering individual trees. But it's not just about trees; the city is also deploying sensors to monitor weather conditions, flooding risks, and climate parameters. These sensors, implemented by Mendigital GmbH, transmit data via a wireless radio network called LoRaWan, and the city has been operating the system since its website (www.menden-vernetzt.info) went live.
The data collected by these sensors is displayed in a user-friendly data cockpit or dashboard, offering practical everyday help. For instance, it provides information about weather warnings, soil humidity, and clothing drying conditions.
The system's primary purpose is to help city officials and residents respond promptly to weather changes and flood threats. By providing detailed insights into urban microclimates, it supports local climate adaptation strategies. Furthermore, it enhances forecasting models for heat warnings and other extreme weather, improving public safety and resource management.
In addition to weather data, the system also collects data on variables such as temperature, humidity, rainfall, water levels, and air quality. This data is transmitted to a central data platform for evaluation.
The platform is designed to be a growing system, easily adopting solutions from other municipalities. For example, it will soon include sensors for disabled parking spaces, making the city center more accessible. It will also incorporate data from existing smiley traffic sensors, providing citizens with a current picture of traffic flows and speeds on a map.
Moreover, the platform allows users to measure the roof area of their own house for cost estimation purposes and check if a moving truck will fit on a small street. The city tree map, another feature of the platform, provides important information about each tree in the city.
Jasmin Grünschläger, a city representative, hopes that the data will motivate citizens to engage in climate protection. In case of potential flooding, the live water level data is particularly useful. The city may also use the data to derive heat protection measures, such as greening areas with high temperatures.
Currently, Menden is among the top 20 percent of the most digital cities in Germany. With this smart city project, the city aims to further improve its urban resilience and provide a better quality of life for its citizens. The project is a testament to Menden's commitment to leveraging technology for the betterment of its citizens and the environment.
[1] This approach leverages sensor networks integrated into urban infrastructure to generate actionable environmental information directly relevant to the city’s needs in daily life and long-term planning. (Source: Smart City Menden)
- The Smart City Project in Menden, which includes deploying sensors for weather conditions, flooding risks, and climate parameters, is a part of environmental-science, using data-and-cloud-computing and technology to generate actionable information for urban resilience.
- Given the sensors' ability to monitor variables such as temperature, humidity, rainfall, water levels, and air quality, the data collected is not solely dedicated to climate-change mitigation but also to supporting local adaptation strategies and improving public safety; moreover, it will soon incorporate solutions for disabled parking spaces and real-time traffic flow information.
- The objective of Menden's Smart City Project is to engage citizens in climate protection, as the collected data can motivate them to take responsibility for water conservation, such as individually watering city trees, while providing valuable insights for heat protection measures, such as greening high-temperature areas.
