Amsterdam Archives - CommuniCity

T-APPS B.V. – Skendy: an assistant for your documents

Cross-border Pilot with Amsterdam

T-APPS B.V. – Skendy: an assistant for your documents

The CommuniCity project Skendy piloted an initiative designed to improve support mechanisms for expats and refugees through an advanced mobile app. This pilot entailed over 40 hours of co-creation sessions with expats, refugees, and various stakeholders such as IAMSTERDAM, students, and local communities in Amsterdam and Prague. The objective was to identify and address the unique challenges faced by these groups through practical, user-focused solutions.

During the piloting process, an event in Prague played a pivotal role in testing and refining these solutions based on participant feedback. The initiative’s core developments included the design and implementation of a new user interface and the integration of an AI-powered chatbot. This chatbot, intended as the central feature of the app, provides personalized assistance and access to a comprehensive knowledge base tailored for both Amsterdam and Prague.

Additionally, the pilot phase included the creation of a demo version of the app specifically for refugees. This demo, developed in collaboration with refugee representatives, aimed to ensure the platform effectively meets their specific needs, although it remains in the testing stages. The pilot yielded promising results: engaging target communities, developing a user-friendly digital interface, and implementing a functional AI assistant that enhances the app’s utility. It also led to the acquisition of new talent to facilitate faster growth and increased support capabilities.

The next steps following the pilot include leveraging the insights gained to refine the app further. These efforts highlight the project’s dedication to continuous enhancement and community involvement in developing services that directly cater to the needs of expats and other end-users.

KU Leuven – Breaking Boundaries with Situated Surveys

Cross-Border Pilot with Prague

Challenge: How to engage the citizens in participatory planning?
Cross-Border Pilot with Porto and Amsterdam

KU Leuven – Breaking Boundaries with Situated Surveys

How to involve residents in urban decision-making and take their insights into account? With the fast development of European cities, which are becoming denser and more diverse, it is essential to engage citizens in how the city should grow. The Situated Surveys of KU Leuven gave us an answer by bringing a part of the urban planning process to the residents’ everyday-life. In Prague, Porto, and Amsterdam, the project’s Citizen Dialog Kit survey devices allow citizens to share their thoughts on a simple, immediate, and inclusive bottom-up urban planning approach. The easy-to-use devices are distributed in public places and gather real-time feedback from the participants. This solution addresses contextual and social challenges, improving the quality and sustainability of city decision-making and overall fostering a more satisfied and inclusive European community.

CoTown Kasmoni Community Exchange

Challenge: How to involve residents in a community savings supporting social initiatives?

CoTown BV – CoTown Kasmoni Community Exchange: Empowering Amsterdam’s Shared Prosperity

The Community Credits and Savings pilot project aimed to develop a community platform and offline activities to facilitate resource sharing, funding opportunities, and collaboration tools between local corporates and governments for social impact projects, local businesses, non-profits, and residents. The pilot involved extensive feedback sessions and co-creation workshops to ensure the platform meets community needs. Key features include the creation of a digital platform and a series of offline activities and events to strengthen social bonds in Amsterdam Zuidoost. The pilot successfully engaged the target group, resulting in a comprehensive report about the project concept and the specifications of the community platform ready for further development and broader implementation. Future plans include additional research and workshops, community events and collaborative prototype development to ensure ongoing improvement and adoption.

Fonetic

Challenge: Amsterdam: How to include the deaf and hearing impaired in broadcasting info on public transport?

Fonetic

Did you know that 1.5 million people in the Netherlands are deaf or hearing-impaired? With this in mind, CommuniCity invited tech providers to explore ways to improve accessibility in public transport communication. Fonetic is an app that runs in the cloud, using AI to translate spoken messages into chat messages. That way you can read instead of hearing urgent messages at stations and in transport, receiving them on your favorite chat app, in your own language! The app was developed in a design sprint in Amsterdam, on board a tram and at the offices of the GVB, the regional transport company. The testers were deaf and hearing-impaired volunteers who had indicated a desire to co-create an innovative solution to more accessible and inclusive public transportation service.

One2One.Run

Challenge: How to encourage girls to take part in sports and exercise?

One2One.Run – One2One.Run or WIRL

The Girls Meet Up pilot app aims to empower girls in sports participation by providing a platform for creating and engaging in sports events, leveraging co-creation and community involvement. Using Girls Meet Up, girls can easily create events, complete with colorful designs generated by AI, and propose experiences based on different sports, facilitating discussions with coaches. Likewise, coaches can create their events and share them with girls, enhancing collaboration, participation, and trust within the community. This project contributes to the promotion of an active lifestyle amongst teen girls, diminishing the unproportioned difference between the number of boys that participate in sports (40%) compared to the girls (17%) in Amsterdam Nieuw-West.

The piloting process involved research, stakeholder engagement, and co-creation sessions with girls, sports clubs, coaches, and community leaders, facilitated by local ambassadors like coach Ellen and local community MinaMi. The pilot successfully developed a user-friendly app, fostering increased participation and enthusiasm amongst girls and strengthening community partnerships, with the next steps including scaling up the app and deepening community engagement.

T-APPS B.V. – Skendy: an assistant for your documents

Challenge: How to adapt an existing technological solution for a specific group?

T-APPS B.V. – Skendy: an assistant for your documents

The CommuniCity project Skendy piloted an initiative designed to improve support mechanisms for expats and refugees through an advanced mobile app. This pilot entailed over 40 hours of co-creation sessions with expats, refugees, and various stakeholders such as IAMSTERDAM, students, and local communities in Amsterdam and Prague. The objective was to identify and address the unique challenges faced by these groups through practical, user-focused solutions.

During the piloting process, an event in Prague played a pivotal role in testing and refining these solutions based on participant feedback. The initiative’s core developments included the design and implementation of a new user interface and the integration of an AI-powered chatbot. This chatbot, intended as the central feature of the app, provides personalized assistance and access to a comprehensive knowledge base tailored for both Amsterdam and Prague.

Additionally, the pilot phase included the creation of a demo version of the app specifically for refugees. This demo, developed in collaboration with refugee representatives, aimed to ensure the platform effectively meets their specific needs, although it remains in the testing stages. The pilot yielded promising results: engaging target communities, developing a user-friendly digital interface, and implementing a functional AI assistant that enhances the app’s utility. It also led to the acquisition of new talent to facilitate faster growth and increased support capabilities.

The next steps following the pilot include leveraging the insights gained to refine the app further. These efforts highlight the project’s dedication to continuous enhancement and community involvement in developing services that directly cater to the needs of expats and other end-users.

Video avatar translation widget (XS2 Content)

Challenge: AI-generated video making healthcare information more accessible
Video avatar translation widget

The Municipality of Amsterdam seeks solutions to help enhance citizens’ understanding of the Dutch National Immunisation Programme and improve overall health outcomes, particularly among those with low literacy skills and those from diverse backgrounds. XS2Content (XS2AUDIO BV) will address this need through the application Video avatar translation widget.

Target Groups:
•People who speak a different language
• Low-literacy individuals
• People with low family care
• Parents and young people with a Moroccan or Turkish background

Objectives:
• Reach hard-to-reach target groups through the use of video content in addition to text
• Reduce video-creation time by leveraging AI technology
• Convert existing text into spoken videos with real-life, lip synced avatars in multiple languages
• Make healthcare information more accessible by converting written content into video format
• Ensure easy accessibility by sharing videos on social media and web-widgetsany

Audio-to-audio translation for status holders

Challenge: How to let non-Dutch speakers communicate in their own language?
Audio-to-audio translation for status holders, in real-time, powered by AI

Status holders are required to go through a participation and immigration process (PIP) at the municipality of Amsterdam. However, employees at the municipality (klantmanagers) and status holders often don’t speak the same language. Klantmanagers speak mostly Dutch, and status holders often Arabic or Tigrinya. Translators are not always available or viable. They are expensive, take time to organize, are not always available in the short term, and sometimes make errors. Meanwhile, most status holders speak languages that have an oral tradition; hence verbal communication is preferred. There are barriers to communication between klantmanagers and status holders.

Objective: Better communication would improve the experience throughout the process for both. To achieve this, Switch AI develops speech technology that does audio-to-audio translation, in real-time! A solution built using the power of state-of-the-art AI technology.

Solution: Switch will build a software service that leverages speech recognition, translation and personalized speech generation AI models. The service will aid klantmanagers and status holders to communicate in their own languages. This service can be integrated with various applications developed by Gemeente Amsterdam, such as the PIP app.

Empowering low-literate citizens with AI (Tolkie)

Challenge: Wildcard – Propose any technological solution for any marginalised community
Empowering low literate citizens of Amsterdam with the help of A.I.

Amsterdam has 33.3% more low-literate citizens than average for the Netherlands. Tolkie has developed a tool that helps low-literate users to overcome obstacles in a complex text. Organizations embed our tool into their website and by doing so they enhance the accessibility of their online platform. Our current solution is developed together with low-literate people. In an iterative process of acquiring user needs, designing and developing a solution, testing with the target audience, adjusting the design, etc. we developed the tool we have now. Our tool currently operates on a per-word basis, meaning that the target audience gets reading aid when they encounter difficult words. However, complexity of a text lies not only in difficult words, but also in complex sentence structures, the use of jargon and proverbial language, the structure of longer texts, etc. During this challenge we are going to extend our reading aid and we want to achieve that with the use of AI and other modern technologies.

WeSolve, driving change with inclusion

Challenge: How to offer opportunities for youngsters having had contact with the law?
WeSolve, driving change with inclusion

The platform built by WeSolve ApS represents a powerful opportunity for the city to showcase its activities and engage with young people, particularly those born in disadvantaged conditions. By using technology to create an active and accessible platform, the city can make youth engagement smoother and more effective. Target groups: Through the WeSolve platform, young people can participate in a wide range of activities that foster social cohesion, build trust, and create meaningful connections with others. These activities are aimed at developing skills, supporting communities, and building a brighter future for everyone involved with a particular attention to disadvantaged youth. Objectives: WeSolve can be used as a powerful tool by municipalities to enhance the level of disadvantaged youth engagement in order to create a safer, more connected, and more engaged community. By empowering young people through community-based initiatives and promoting social cohesion, WeSolve platform results as the means through which municipalities can reduce the likelihood of criminal activity and create a brighter future for young people born in disadvantaged conditions.