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Human-Scale Scan Cars report

Scan cars are increasingly becoming the eyes and ears of the municipality. Used for a variety of needs — from enforcing parking policy to registering waste to be picked up on the street — these vehicles bring major advantages. In cities across the Netherlands, scan cars being employed for a variety of municipal tasks. In Amsterdam, the city is executing a pilot with machine-learning equipped cameras mounted on garbage trucks, which automatically geo-locate and classify garbage on the streets. This information will then be made available to garbage collection trucks, allowing them to plan their routes efficiently. Rotterdam is experimenting with scan cars equipped with visual cameras and LIDAR to capture both images and 3D point clouds. With these vehicles increasingly relying on data collected in public space, now is the time to guide this future in a more ethical direction and prevent the creation of a ‘big brother’ city.

This three-part design sprint was designed such that interesting, creative ideas could be developed within a short time-frame. We invited representatives from the Municipality of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, CTO of Amsterdam, TADA, and researchers from TU Delft to participate, share insights and collectively work towards a more human scan car. This booklet presents the outcomes of this process. From reevaluating sensing technology used in registering parking violations to further exploring forms of human interactions with the scan car, each concept focuses on adding different human perspectives to the existing model of urban data collection.

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