Data-driven services for sustainable public value creation in essential public services – benefits for citizens, government and businesses.
Smart-DLWD is funded by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the European Union through the EFRE/JTF programme NRW 2021–2027, as part of the NEXT.IN.NRW innovation competition. The project is managed by Projektträger Jülich (PtJ).
Grant number of ImpressSol GmbH (iits-consulting): EFRE-20800507
Municipal companies keep essential public services running: waste management, street cleaning, energy, transport. They have data, but rarely an AI team of their own.
Smart-DLWD investigates how these companies can access AI services with a low barrier to entry and use them economically. The goal is AI applications that cut costs, make operations more efficient and create new value.
The consortium tests this on real use cases at EDG Entsorgung Dortmund GmbH. The results go into open-access guides so that other municipal companies can use them.
iits-consulting is the consortium’s AI consultant and development partner. We advise EDG on which tasks are suited to AI and where it pays off economically. We also lead the technical implementation.
To do this, we help gather the requirements, analyse the data, build the AI components including their data pipelines, and integrate them at EDG.
The images of the recycling centre and the workshop are AI illustrations based on the real application. The screenshots come from our applications.
Plan cleaning routes so that the workload is spread fairly across the teams and the days of the week, and the empty runs between jobs get shorter. The fixed cleaning intervals stay in place.
Automatically analyse images from vehicle cameras: build a road-sign register including how dirty each sign is, and detect illegal waste dumping and road damage. People and licence plates stay protected.
Detect construction sites in the street on the camera images and document how they progress over time.
A chatbot answers questions at the recycling centres, for example how to pack and dispose of a hazardous substance correctly.
During maintenance, the workshop staff talk freely with the AI assistant, without forms or typing. The assistant guides them through the checks and takes care of the maintenance documentation.
State of North Rhine-Westphalia and European Union (EFRE/JTF programme NRW 2021–2027)
NEXT.IN.NRW innovation competition
Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MKW)
Projektträger Jülich (PtJ)
EFRE-20800507 (ImpressSol GmbH / iits-consulting)
15 August 2024 – 14 August 2027
Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML
more than 255
Associated partners: Verband kommunaler Unternehmen e. V. (VKU), Dortmunder Stadtwerke AG (DSW21), City of Dortmund.
Consortium project page: www.smart-dlwd.de (hosted by Fraunhofer IML).
Then it’s a fit for us. We like working on questions that have no ready-made answer yet. Let’s talk about it.
