Research project
‘Crystal ball’?: A product pilot to predict the effects of future urban interventions on experienced safety
How can photorealistic 3D scenes help predict whether interventions in urban public spaces will foster citizens' sense of security?
- Duration
- 2024 - 2025
- Contact
- Jelle Brands
- Funding
- KIEM
Aim
The aim of this project is to explore a new method to assess the effectiveness of interventions in urban public spaces on citizens' sense of security. By creating photorealistic 3D scenes using Gaussian Splatting techniques, potential users can be exposed to proposed interventions. By comparing their experiences, it can be determined whether the intervention will have the intended effect. If the method proves useful, policymakers can more accurately decide how to use their resources to improve citizens’ perceived safety in urban public spaces.
Interdisciplinary
This project brings together various disciplines and areas of expertise to tackle a complex problem. These include: urban planning, criminology and security studies, computer science, and behavioural sciences. By combining these various disciplines, the project can provide a holistic approach to assessing urban interventions and their impact on citizens' perceived safety.
Summary
Ensuring that citizens feel safe in urban public spaces is something that is important for all town and city councils. Interventions are therefore frequently made in urban public spaces that are intended to improve safety, often costing significant amounts of money. Possible interventions include camera surveillance, changes in the light distribution and brightness of street lighting, or even the complete redevelopment of urban public spaces. So it would be good if these interventions were effective. They should promote feelings of security as much as possible. Zero or adverse effects should be avoided. But how can we reliably assess the effect of an intervention even before it has been implemented? Of course, we can learn a lot from scientific research in this respect. And we can look at real-life situations, where the specific intervention has been applied before. That can provide some general, though often not very context-specific, guidance.
In this project, we explore a new, complementary method to predict the potential of future interventions in urban public spaces. Photorealistic 3D scenes are created using Gausian Splatting techniques and potential users are exposed to the proposed intervention. By comparing the experiences of these users, we can discover whether the intervention has the intended effect. If our pilot proves useful, it will allow policymakers to come to a more accurate assessment of how they allocate their resources.