# Smart-DLWD

[Smart-DLWD](https://iits-consulting.de/en/smart-dlwd)

2024–2027

## Hands-on AI for everyday heroes

Data-driven services for sustainable public value creation in essential public services – benefits for citizens, government and businesses.

### Funded by the European Union and the State of North Rhine-Westphalia

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

## Starting point in Dortmund

of streets cleaned every week, plus 4,386 km of pavements

2,193 km

Source: EDG, as of 2020

street litter bins emptied per year

880,000+

Source: EDG, as of 2020

vehicles in street cleaning

150+

Source: EDG, as of 2020

reports of litter and dirt (2025)

11,450

Source: City of Dortmund

reported road damages (2023)

11,957

Source: City of Dortmund

major civil engineering projects in the 2026 work programme

730

Source: City of Dortmund, February 2026

## What the project is about

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.

## Our role

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.

## Five use cases from EDG’s operations

The images of the recycling centre and the workshop are AI illustrations based on the real application. The screenshots come from our applications.

### Planning street cleaning

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.

### GDPR-compliant camera analysis

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.

### Recording construction sites and their progress

Detect construction sites in the street on the camera images and document how they progress over time.

### Chatbot for the recycling centres

A chatbot answers questions at the recycling centres, for example how to pack and dispose of a hazardous substance correctly.

### AI assistance in the workshop

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.

## Project facts

Funded by

State of North Rhine-Westphalia and European Union (EFRE/JTF programme NRW 2021–2027)

Programme

NEXT.IN.NRW innovation competition

Ministry

Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MKW)

Project management

Projektträger Jülich (PtJ)

Grant number

EFRE-20800507 (ImpressSol GmbH / iits-consulting)

Duration

15 August 2024 – 14 August 2027

Coordination

Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML

Road-sign types in the register

more than 255

## Consortium

- [Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML](https://www.iml.fraunhofer.de/) (coordination)
- [TU Dortmund University, Chair of Enterprise Logistics (LFO)](https://lfo.mb.tu-dortmund.de/)
- [EDG Entsorgung Dortmund GmbH](https://www.edg.de/)
- ImpressSol GmbH (iits-consulting)
- [Spherity GmbH](https://www.spherity.com/)
- [Building Information Cloud GLWG GmbH](https://thinkbic.de/)

Associated partners: [Verband kommunaler Unternehmen e. V. (VKU)](https://www.vku.de/), [Dortmunder Stadtwerke AG (DSW21)](https://www.dsw21.de/), [City of Dortmund](https://www.dortmund.de/).

Consortium project page: www.smart-dlwd.de (hosted by Fraunhofer IML).

## Too new for a standard project?

Then it’s a fit for us. We like working on questions that have no ready-made answer yet. Let’s talk about it.

[Talk to our team](https://iits-consulting.de/en/contact/index.md)

[See our work](https://iits-consulting.de/en/our-work/index.md)

AVG. RESPONSE \< 1 WORKING DAY