Smart Reflector: New Cycling Dashboard for the city of Amsterdam
Cities across Europe are rethinking their streets to be safer, more inclusive, and people-focused. Amsterdam is transitioning to be a car-free center by 2023. Yet many planning decisions are still made without real data on how cyclists and wheelchair users actually move and experience the city. In this challenge, students will help design a next-generation dashboard that brings together data from three sources: Smart Reflector sensor (mounted on your own bike! to capture vibrations, braking, and road conditions in real time), Municipal open data (such as street networks, infrastructure, and safety reports), Third-party APIs (e.g., Google traffic data, mobility services). The goal is to create a visual, interactive platform that gives cities clear insights into where infrastructure works, where it fails, and how it can be improved. Students will gain hands-on experience with real-world data, urban mobility challenges, and the opportunity to shape tools that could be adopted by European cities.
How can sensor-based cyclist behaviour data, modelled through agent-based simulation, identify unsafe cycling patterns in Amsterdam's infrastructure?
Using bike wheel-mounted sensors provided byLos Aparatos GmbH, the students analysed real-world cycling behaviour, especially hard braking, a strong signal of stress and near-misses.
What stood out:
• Sudden braking happens mostly away from traffic lights
• Road surface quality matters more than expected
• Mixed-use streets quietly accumulate risk
Cyclists constantly adapt to the street, often by sacrificing safety margins, and cities rarely see that reflected in their data.
This kind of behavioural insight offers a more human, proactive way to plan safer streets for biker friendly cities.