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Building on Success: Senator’s Digital Kerbside Management

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As part of the Senator project, which focuses on improving the efficiency and sustainability of last-mile deliveries, Dublin’s Urban Living Lab is hosting a pilot initiative for advanced kerbside space management. This initiative offers detailed maps of loading and unloading zones now integrated into Senator’s ICT platform, along with a range of other kerbside assets.

Led by the Smart Cities team within the Dublin City Council, this pioneering effort has already achieved significant success and has been nationally recognized as a Pathfinder Programme project. Now entering its final phase, the initiative aims to scale up, utilizing the insights and successes gained to transition towards a fully digital, dynamic, and real-time management system for kerbside spaces.

Kicking Chaos from the Kerbside

This success story builds on the achievements of Senator’s pilot project in Dublin, the Digital Kerbside Management initiative, launched in October 2022. Referred to informally as ‘Kicking Chaos from the Kerbside’ by the Smart Dublin team, its primary objective was to create a comprehensive digital inventory of kerbside assets. This initiative aimed to enhance understanding of the different assets and usage dynamics of a valuable urban feature: the kerbside.

The project involved collecting data using LiDAR and Mobile Mapping technologies to create a centralized kerb asset repository. The resulting data visualization helps cities comprehend how kerb spaces are shared, utilized, and regulated. By partnering with innovative companies like Appyway and Curb IQ, Dublin piloted the Digital Kerbside Management platforms.

Recently integrated into Senator’s ICT platform, the system offers detailed maps of the city’s loading zones, filling a significant data gap. A key challenge was maintaining up-to-date information. To tackle this, Dublin City Council is collaborating with Inakalum to resurvey the area and update the platform data continuously. The objective is to evaluate the platform’s ability to capture and present data in the appropriate format effectively.

Additionally, following consultations with the City Council’s transportation department, the Smart Dublin team installed 48 sensors across nine strategically chosen locations in congested areas. Sensors provide real-time updates on availability of loading bays via a web platform and mobile app.

By enabling dynamic and real-time management of kerbsides, based on accurate and immediate information, better decision-making is facilitated. This can enhance the efficiency of daily logistics operations, alleviate congestion, minimize carbon emissions from vehicles searching for parking and unloading spots, and contribute to a more liveable and orderly urban environment.

From Pilot to Policy: Empowering Future Urban Development

As the Senator project nears completion, Dublin’s Smart City team is dedicated to sharing insights with all relevant stakeholders, including authorities, policymakers, businesses and citizens. This will help transition to a more efficient and sustainable urban infrastructure.

These results can inform policies and regulations to transition from an analogue kerbside system to a dynamic, real-time digital world,” explained Jamie Cudden, Smart City Program Manager, recently for the “Better Cities By Design” Arcadis’ podcast. The transformation is meant to assist drivers, logistics companies, businesses, and citizens in utilizing kerbside space more effectively. “By optimizing kerbside usage, we can reduce emissions, meet climate targets, and enhance the liveability of our cities”, he added.

To support this transition, a comprehensive case study detailing efforts, insights, conclusions, and lessons learned from this pilot project is meant to be produced soon. Digital kerbside management, as demonstrated by the pilot projects, has the potential to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of urban infrastructure management.

"The role of kerbside space in Dublin City is becoming increasingly complex, with multiple demands placed on it daily. It makes a crucial contribution by accommodating different activities generated by city life and its reallocation to public realm or greening can greatly improve the city’s environment. A big challenge for Dublin City is how best to manage the demands on the kerbside in such a way as to support the social, environmental and economic life of the city. The pilots undertaken as part of the SENATOR project have been important in both helping us understand how the kerbside is used and how better it might be managed. We hope to build on the learnings of the project in the preparation of a kerbside strategy for Dublin City”, Edel Kelly, Head of Transport Planning, Dublin City Council

With kerbside management and the Senator Project highlighted in the National Demand Management Strategy (Moving Together Strategy), the project has gained national recognition, paving the way for transformative change in Dublin.

Author: Mónica Pérez

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