The MIT Senseable City Lab and Swedish city Helsingborg collaborate on the Future of Public Safety in Cities

The MIT Senseable City Lab and the City of Helsingborg, Sweden, have recently signed a three-year Consortium Agreement. The collaboration aims to develop a research agenda centered on the "Future of Public Safety in Cities". The results will be showcased as part of the H22 City Expo, an international event hosted by Helsingborg in the summer of 2022.

"Helsingborg's H22 innovation initiative has allowed us to open up the city as a testbed for exploring smart solutions that improve people's lives. The MIT Senseable City Lab is at the forefront of research on how to use data to adapt urban environments to serve the residents' needs, not the other way around. It's an exciting collaboration that I expect will benefit everyone involved," says Peter Danielsson, Mayor, and Chairman of the Municipal Board of Helsingborg.

To explore the research topic,the MIT Senseable City Lab and the City of Helsingborg will develop a research plan. Firstly, social media data and public safety data will be analyzed to understand various events that concern notions of safety and public perception of the issue. Events such as reports and crime statistics will be correlated with the social sentiments identified to find areas of opportunity to improve safety.

“We are very happy to be working with the city of Helsingborg to analyze the perception of safety within the city”, says Carlo Ratti, Director of the MIT Senseable City Lab. "By analyzing available social media data alongside public safety data we can help to detect areas of opportunity to improve conditions of safety in the city. We look forward to creating an urban demo to be showcased during the H22 City Expo as a demonstration of how digital technologies can be used in non-invasive ways to improve the safety and quality of life in cities.”

Secondly, the insights and ideas from the first phase will then be applied within current or planned digital infrastructure projects in Helsingborg to gather data under real-world conditions.

"Innovative initiatives like our Smart Street Lights project will generate the data needed to develop these ideas. The advantage of having a city-wide testbed is that it has attracted cutting-edge expertise. A growing tech community of AI leaders is turning Helsingborg into a mecca for data-driven innovations," says Dick Johansson, acting Director of Urban Planning, City of Helsingborg.

For more information on the MIT Senseable City Lab, click here. Learn more about H22 and ongoing innovation initiatives at www.h22.se/en.

For more information or media inquiries, please contact Maria Ploberg, Press Officer H22, maria.ploberg@helsingborg.se