Issuu

2025-2026

Titel

Connecting the dots, closing the loops

From food policy to table

Five great startups

MIT and AMS Institute

Solving the urban plastic soup

Foreword Thema

©Iris Duvekot

Impact Digest Connecting the dots, closing the loops

The theme of this year's Impact Digest describes the actual work it takes to make cities regenerative, resilient, and just. From climate adaptation and resource scarcity to social cohesion and governance, cities demand new ways of thinking, collaborating, and innovating. At the same time, cities face cascading challenges on housing, extreme weather, energy costs, and inequality. Such challenges converge in dense urban environments and require approaches that connect and accelerate smallscale innovations into system-wide urban transitions: technologically innovative, socially inclusive, scalable, and grounded in the complexity of real cities. Our mission at AMS Institute is to accelerate the development of sciencebased solutions to make cities resilient, regenerative, and just. Our work challenges the status quo and redefines what was once thought impossible. Throughout these pages, you’ll see how we are tackling big questions, such as: Who pays the bill for climate safety in flood-prone areas? How can the city prevent microplastics in canals from reaching the sea? And what helps residents of older buildings withstand extreme temperatures? These are among the challenges municipalities bring to us. In turn, we develop scientific insights with Amsterdam as our living laboratory, experimenting across the city and the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region. The following pages showcase how our research, entrepreneurship, and education loop back to the city, and how innovation takes shape in the urban fabric. Read about how The New Street Project redesigned asphalt using circular methods, how food scientists and urban economists are starting a movement to create a more equitable and less wasteful food system, and how our MSc MADE graduates have gone on to become urban engineers working alongside city officials, companies, and communities.

CORE ACADEMIC PARTNERS

Besides reflecting on our impact over the past year, the release of this edition of our Impact Digest also marks a moment of transition. As of 1 September 2026, Prof.Dr. Dave Huitema will start as AMS Institute’s new Scientific Director. We look back with gratitude on six years of dedicated leadership by Prof.Dr. Eveline van Leeuwen, and warmly welcome our new Scientific Director, looking forward to continuing our work. ZWANET VAN LUBEK MANAGING DIRECTOR AMS INSTITUTE EVELINE VAN LEEUWEN SCIENTIFIC DIRECTOR AMS INSTITUTE

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Contents

AMS INSTITUTE IMPACT DIGEST 2025-2026 10

From food policy to table

Five great startups

MIT and AMS Institute

Three stories about feeding the city sustainably

Celebrating five years of the AMS Startup Booster

The next five years in biodiversity science

“TOGETHER WE CAN REINVENT OUR CITIES.”

Solving the urban plastic soup Capturing plastic waste in windy, waterborne cities

The New Street – The infrastructure of tomorrow De-risking the city – A business case for investments

and decision-making

From food policy to table – Three stories about feeding the city sustainably MSc MADE alumni – Urban engineers in the field Fair energy, in practice – Heating and powering cities for everyone

4 8 10 15 18

Less gridlock, more flow – Walking, cycling, and responsible crowd control

22 Five great startups – Celebrating five years of the AMS Startup Booster 24 From canals to cargo lanes – Waterborne logistics in action 28 MIT and AMS Institute – The next five years in biodiversity science 30 Solving the urban plastic soup – Capturing plastic waste in windy, waterborne cities

34 The year’s events – 360-degree encounters, sparking collaborative impact 38 Building the biobased city – Accelerating low-carbon construction 42 Students in the field – MSc MADE living labs in action 44 Extreme heat – Solutions in planning, policy, and citizen engagement 46 Further reading 49 3

Circularity

The New Street Imagine a stacking robot that sorts and cleans old bricks for reuse, instead of discarding them. Down the road, freshly laid asphalt is mixed twenty degrees cooler than industry standards. A construction site’s trailer runs on solar panels, and a hydrogen generator powers the entire site in a future scenario that would one day draw nothing from the city grid. These are elements of De Nieuwe Straat (The New Street) project, where AMS Institute, the City of Amsterdam, TU Delft, Wageningen University & Research, and frontline contractors are testing such solutions, co-creating the infrastructure sector's future. They form an ecosystem of overlapping pilots, each targeting a different piece of the urban infrastructure puzzle.

The infrastructure of tomorrow

Circularity

Nelson Mandelapark is one of four locations in the city testing low-temperature asphalt to reduce emissions and environmental impact.

“Amsterdam's pavements are made of bricks and concrete tiles. We aim to increase their reuse by analyzing current processes, logistics, and emissions. As a link between the city and contractors, we provide insight and fresh ideas to support the transition to a circular economy.” PETAR KOLJENSIC | RESEARCH FELLOW, AMS INSTITUTE

Innovation in practice

The project is part of a broader program, Toekomstbestendige Leefomgeving (Future-proof Living Environment), and forms an ecosystem of overlapping pilots. The sustainable asphalt is being field-tested simultaneously at four Amsterdam locations: Nelson Mandelapark, Van Nijenrodeweg, Gooiseweg, and Middenweg. Low-temperature mixes, synthetic binders, and bio-based alternatives to conventional bitumen are being assessed for performance and long-term viability under real traffic conditions. Early data are already informing city-wide procurement decisions. Energy on the construction site has long been a blind spot in urban sustainability accounting. Through a three-phase pilot, contractor KWS and the municipality tested green hydrogen as the basis for an emission-free construction site, beginning with a hydrogen-powered site, batteries, and solar panels, scaling up to charging heavy electric machinery, and ultimately powering a full asphalt operation using a 100-kW fuel cell and MEGC trailer. Replacing around 22,000 liters of diesel with 219.7 kg of green hydrogen delivered a 58% relative reduction in CO₂ emissions. The key barriers to scaling were not technical but logistical and regulatory: green hydrogen availability, spatial safety requirements, and a nine-month permitting process that cut the final phase short. In 2026, a national technical standard (NTA) for hydrogen aggregates will be introduced to clarify and standardize permitting across Dutch construction sites.

Circularity

Amsterdam's streets are paved with generations of bricks; the challenge has always been making reuse economically viable. A purpose-built stacking robot, made by contractor Beentjes, now automates the restacking process after cleaning, slashing the labor costs that have historically made reuse impractical. The results are striking: a 98% relative reduction in CO₂, the greatest Environmental Cost Indicator saving of all pilots tested.

Scaling has been held back by a lack of storage space, which the municipality addressed by creating HUB XL: a large warehouse at the Port of Amsterdam offering shared workspace for municipalities, contractors, knowledge institutions, and young talent, alongside practical storage and processing of infrastructure materials.

Sharing the load

Pioneering innovation requires organizations to take risks together. With multiple stakeholders, competing interests, and uncertainty built into the process, how do you keep everyone aligned? For De Nieuwe Straat, the answer lies in two complementary roles. The Living Lab Coordinator, working from AMS Institute, holds the system: understanding how the work fits into the broader landscape of Amsterdam, the infrastructure sector, and other knowledge and policy organizations. The Mediator of Innovation holds the relationships, embedded directly in the day-to-day workings of the project from the municipality or contractor side, aligning interests and keeping shared goals visible when institutional pressure creates tension.

Together, they turn isolated pilots into durable change. Claudia Walraven, a Mediator of Innovation for the municipality, finds that projects move faster, decisions are made more efficiently, and outcomes are more measurable. “The innovations do not remain pilots; they grow into lasting solutions for the city.” Contractor Tim Rietmeijer of KWS describes a collaboration that pushes his team further than a conventional project ever would: “Together with the Mediator of Innovation, we look at how we can innovate and become more sustainable. Our hydrogen shed is our pride and joy; it's currently being tested at another location in the city.

Partners including the City of Amsterdam, Beentjes GWW, Dura Vermeer, Heijmans, BAM Infra, Rutte Groep, Van Gelder, KWS, Germieco, Marks Veekens, and H. van Wijk transport gather to develop futureproof solutions for complex issues and a new way of working in the infrastructure sector.

Circularity In November 2025, the De Nieuwe Straat consortium gathered at “Working Together on Tomorrow’s Infrastructure” and took on hands-on exercises designed to test collaboration under pressure, where trust, communication and alignment proved essential.

Living Labs: Not a typical infrastructure project

“The innovations do not remain pilots; they grow into lasting solutions for the city.” CLAUDIA WALRAVEN | MEDIATOR OF INNOVATION, THE CITY OF AMSTERDAM

And we're already exploring whether we can add new zeroemission equipment and innovative asphalt mixtures.” “I believe we can learn from technology, as we learn from looking at nature. Working in Living Labs allows us, both the municipality and society as a whole, to learn from one of the greatest technological achievements people can build: ingenious, resilient, and sustainable cities,” said Amsterdam Director of Innovation for the Future Proof Assets Program, Sacha Stolp.

Leerlab Infra: Passing the playbook forward

A Living Lab does not keep its insights to itself. Therefore, on behalf of the program Toekomstbestendige Leefomgeving, AMS Institute created an online learning environment: Leerlab Infra. It is a platform that makes the knowledge, methods, and tools developed through De Nieuwe Straat available to professionals across the Netherlands. “My ambition is to make insights from research, but also from colleagues and partners, accessible to practice. In this way, we can strengthen Living Labs as engines for societal change and help create real impact,” said TU Delft researcher Sterre Lidwine de Jager. The training, workshops, and shared frameworks equip contractors, municipalities, and researchers with the practical skills to put this way of working into practice, for resilient, regenerative, and just urban infrastructure at scale.

De Nieuwe Straat is designed to keep generating value: a new emissions-tracking tool captures project-level data on materials, vehicles, and machinery in real time, producing the evidence base policymakers have needed. Alongside that, AI-powered predictive maintenance models are being developed by TU Delft researchers to help Amsterdam optimize when and how it intervenes in its road network. This automates a manual process, making it faster, less error-prone, and capable of looking further ahead than traditional planning allows. These pilots don't run in parallel silos. They are connected within a Living Lab — a structured environment in which municipalities, contractors, and researchers design experiments together, test them in the real city, and learn from both success and failure. The iterations, lessons, and practical solutions come about through a lasting culture of collective problem-solving across the sector. “Our Living Lab Way of Working handbook is a means to an end: making Amsterdam and other cities more resilient, regenerative, and just. To actually change the city, we need a smart, effective approach. For this, we have a handbook that we use in our daily work,” said Mark Kauw, Team Lead & Urban Living Lab Program Developer at AMS Institute. “The handbook’s detailed methodology and advice on collaboration are for anyone to download and use. We hope this creates a ripple effect among practitioners beyond AMS Institute.”

Read the Living Lab Way of Working handbook here.

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Climate risk

De-risking the city

Maged Elsamny. © Vincent Basler

A business case for investments and decision-making The Netherlands has a lot of data about climate risks. Researchers can identify where flooding is likely to occur, where heat accumulates in cities and which areas are vulnerable to storms. Governments, investors, developers and residents can use this information when making decisions about the future of areas and buildings. But what do these risks actually mean in practice for investments?

That question runs through the work of the Red&Blue research program, of which AMS Institute is one of the core scientific partners. Maged Elsamny, researcher and Living Lab Coordinator at AMS Institute and TU Delft, is bringing the project's partners together to co-create knowledge and actions on climate risk in the Netherlands and de-risk the city of Amsterdam from climate hazards. He does this by working collaboratively with stakeholders to ensure integration among businesses, knowledge institutions, and the government. In the program, researchers and professionals collaborate on climate resilience in the built environment. Some research entails understanding risks themselves. In this article, Elsamny explains how research focuses on what happens once risks are identified, on how climate risks are assessed, or what the consequences are of doing nothing.

Climate risk

From hazard to damage

The Climate Damage Calculator (CDC) was developed to answer some of those questions. The tool translates flood risks into estimated financial impacts at the individual building level. It was developed by Elsamny, and TU Delft researcher Simona Bianchi, supported by the AMS Prototyping Team and two assistant researchers from AMS Institute and TU Delft. The tool has been tested on property owned by Bouwinvest in Amsterdam. “Risk is composed of vulnerability, hazard and exposure,” said Elsamny. “A lot of climate information stops at the hazard-level of the risk. So, the identification where flooding may occur. But that does not tell you what the consequences are for a building owner, housing corporation, municipality or resident. The question we wanted to answer in our research was: how do we translate the climate risk of flooding into financial impact on the building level, instead of on the national or city level?” In order to do so, the CDC combines publicly available climate hazard data with information about buildings. “The CDC is open source and publicly available, which is unusual in this field. By making the methodology transparent, we hope to create a shared understanding of climate risk. When people share a common view of the problem, it becomes easier to agree on adaptation measures and investment priorities,” he said. “Climate adaptation is often discussed in terms of risk, but decisions are usually made in terms of investments. If users of the calculator understand the potential costs of future damage, they are in a better position to decide whether to invest in a building or to take climate adaptation measures to reduce future costs. A flood map tells you where water might go. The calculator helps answer what that means financially.”

Interpreting climate risk

The Climate Damage Calculator builds on another line of research led by Elsamny. Within Red&Blue, he examined how Dutch real estate organisations use Climate Risk Assessment (CRA) tools to evaluate physical climate risks.

Together, the CRA research and the Climate Damage Calculator point to the same challenge: generating climate information is not the main bottleneck. The challenge remains in what to do with the generated information.

More than numbers

Research within Red&Blue shows that climate adaptation cannot be reduced to risk calculations alone. Decisions about resilience are also shaped by questions of responsibility, affordability, governance, and inclusion. These questions matter because climate impacts are not experienced equally. Lower-income households and other vulnerable groups often have fewer resources to adapt to climate risks such as heat. Investments that increase climate resilience can also create new tensions, for example, when the investments raise housing prices. Through workshops, stakeholder dialogs, and community engagement activities, Red&Blue researchers have explored how different actors perceive climate risks, negotiate trade-offs and define responsibilities.

Beyond just information

All research within Red&Blue addresses different dimensions of the same problem: how do we make our built environment more climate resilient? Elsamny’s research shows us that information about climate risk can help different groups make more informed decisions about investments and climate adaptation measures. It breaks the lock-in of the current way of thinking about urban developments and brings us closer to climate-aware investments and, in turn, future-proof cities.

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High water levels in Dordrecht, one of the flood-prone areas the Red&Blue project focuses on, along with Watergraafsmeer in Amsterdam. © Richard de Bruijn

“Multiple tools can produce different results for the same location,” said Elsamny. “International platforms are useful for comparing portfolios and meeting reporting requirements, while national tools are often better equipped to account for local conditions such as flood defenses, water management systems and planned adaptation measures.” Climate risk assessment is therefore rarely a matter of accepting a model's output. Organizations should interpret different sources of information and decide which are relevant for a particular decision. Bouwinvest used Elsamny’s research to inform the redesign of its own climate risk assessment approach for its building portfolio. This directly influences their investment decisions.

Urban agriculture Thema

Amsterdam's food strategy aims to make healthy, sustainable, and affordable food accessible to all residents while cutting food waste in half by 2030, supporting urban farming, shorter supply chains, and innovative entrepreneurs to build a more circular and equitable food system. AMS Institute explores farming on floating islands, how well-placed community fridges make a difference, and the organization of food systems around intimate kitchen tables.

FROM FOOD POLICY TO TABLE

Urban agriculture

The smart community fridge What if a single fridge could fight both food waste and food insecurity at once? AMS Institute researcher Joe Llewellyn, Buurtbuik and MIT's Senseable City Lab tested exactly that by placing a smart, sensor-equipped community fridge beside the Jordaan community center Het Claverhuis for 30 days. The result: 1,465 kg of food saved from waste, worth €13,291, donated daily by a local organic supermarket. Crucially, 35% of fridge users polled said they experienced mild to severe food insecurity. According to the Amsterdam food strategy, nearly one in four Amsterdammers regularly cannot afford a healthy meal, rising to almost 60% among low-income residents. The research shows that simple, community-rooted interventions can address the gap between Amsterdam's food abundance and its food poverty.

Floating Deltas: Growing food on water Floating Deltas, an AMS Institute and Wageningen University & Research project, tests whether food can be grown on floating islands in water-rich, low-lying urban deltas such as cities threatened by flooding, soil subsidence, and extreme weather. The project explores cultivation systems, economics, and consumer acceptance. Integrating it all into a working prototype has presented many surprises so far, and the waters have not always been smooth. For example, Floating Deltas project leader and researcher at WUR, Arjan Dekking, and the consortium had their sights set on two testing locations. The Amsterdam Living Lab was intended for waters near AMS Institute, in the heart of Amsterdam. But safety concerns, competing experiments, and worries about disturbing biodiversity at the proposed waterside location ruled it out. “At first I was a little bit frustrated,” Dekking admits. But the setback forced a pivot to Almere, where the project now runs its living lab on Dekking’s home turf. “It is always nice to do a project in your own neighborhood.” A second Amsterdam location, he now believes, would have been too much to manage alongside the technical complexity of building an entirely new prototype from scratch.

Read more about the Buurtfridge here.

Floating Deltas moved ahead with its Almere Living Lab. It proved successful, witnessing the first harvest in May 2026 with a healthy crop of 2,000 bok choy. The island rises and falls with water levels and requires no land.

Another success is the project’s innovation agenda and roadmap for floating crops, to guide other communities on whether floating crops should be introduced, what a floating greenhouse can look like and how it relates to consumers.

It discusses who can play a role (government, water boards, business and research) and under which conditions (policy, regulations, market & consumer), along with viewpoints on the international perspective of floating crops.

Urban agriculture

The project’s island sits at Technology Readiness Level 4: proof of principle achieved, and the consortium includes businesses that can bring the devices to market. Floating food production would not compete on price with the Netherlands' large-scale, low-cost agriculture. But for Caribbean islands dependent on food imports, megacities like Singapore or Hong Kong, or flood-prone deltas in Bangladesh or Vietnam, the equation looks very different.

A boat cruises to first harvest of bok choy grown on a Floating Delta, grown from a closed system that allows adjustments in oxygen levels and other factors in an AMS Institute and Wageningen Univeristy project seeking farming solutions that do not require soil.

Managing director of Floating Islands Martin Hubers (left) displays the harvest with Saria de Olde (right), the farm manager of the floating island.

“As climate change threatens coastal cities with flooding, soil subsidence and extreme weather, floating farms offer a radical rethink of where food can grow. Developing a floating greenhouse has definitely been one of the highlights of this year for me,” said Bart Kuiter, AMS Institute Metropolitan Food Systems lead. Floating deltas is one idea for sustainable and locallyembedded food production, particularly through their potential for resource efficiency, climate adaptation, and multifunctional use. Running through 2028, the project will investigate other functions of floating deltas and challenges around technical feasibility, operational organization, and policy frameworks to support future development and largescale deployment. Upon overcoming those hurdles, such a modular and adaptable design might one day feed water-scarce, saline, and climate-vulnerable environments around the world.

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Urban agriculture

Women on food A pot of lentil soup simmers on the stove. Grape leaves, stuffed and fragrant, are arranged on a platter. Someone has brought sopropo, alongside Madame Jeanette peppers and a bunch of Moroccan mint. Pull up a chair, grab a plate, and hear from the women who started a movement called Women on Food, which officially launched as a foundation in December 2025. Their mission is to give greater visibility to the knowledge, experience, and contributions of women in food systems, and to help strengthen their role in the transition to a more sustainable food future. Antonia Weiss (Women on Food Co-Founder and Research Fellow at AMS Institute): Amsterdam is one of the most food-diverse cities in the world, and yet we keep looking elsewhere for solutions for healthy and affordable food. The knowledge we need is already here. It's in the community gardens of Nieuw-West, in the kitchens of Zuidoost, and served at tables everywhere in between. Rosamunde Dors (Women on Food Advisor & Project Manager, City of Amsterdam Inclusion & Diversity): That's exactly why Women on Food has to sit between the policymakers and the community. Not translating one for the other — actually bridging them. Women on Food now has a direct relationship with Amsterdam's food strategy department, and there is genuine commitment and understanding that working with this group helps to address blind spots. Antonia: From the perspective of Women on Food, we are particularly concerned about two blind spots in current food policy. First: food culture within migrant and diasporic communities. Second: gender. Who actually does the daily food work in this city? It's women. It's not biology, it's how we organize society. And when policymakers talk about “shifting consumer behavior,” they're largely talking about shifting women's behavior. Women who are already carrying enormous responsibility, much of it unpaid.

Antonia: Our role as an accelerator and thought leader is really twofold. One: we surface knowledge that's already present but invisible: eating a more plant-based diet, avoiding food waste, growing your own food, medicinal uses of food. We're asking: how do we create conditions where people can fully use the knowledge they already have? Two: we hold policymakers accountable to inclusion. A sustainable food system that only benefits affluent neighborhoods isn't a just transition.

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Amsterdam's food strategy sets an ambitious target: 60% plant-based proteins in the city's diet by 2030, with a healthier, fairer food system for all. While nearly tens of thousands of households live in poverty, the benefits of the city's food transition disproportionately reach its wealthier neighborhoods. Women on Food bridges this gap: connecting the City's sustainability goals to the lived expertise of the women already feeding Amsterdam, ensuring the food transition is built with the community, not just for it.

Nadia Zerouali (Women on Food Co-Founder, Cookbook author): I saw it clearly at our launch. Over 120 women, each working to change the food system through cooking, growing, running businesses, organizing community kitchens. So much knowledge. So much energy. And almost none of it is recognized in policy circles, until now.

Engineers of the future

MSc MADE alumni Urban engineers in the field Student life is a vibrant element at AMS Institute, thriving alongside researchers and stakeholders working on urban transitions. The MSc in Metropolitan Analysis, Design and Engineering (MADE), a two-year joint degree from Wageningen University and TU Delft, combines urban engineering, design, data science, entrepreneurial thinking, and social science to tackle complex sustainability challenges through real-world learning, multidisciplinary teamwork, and partnerships with leading institutions and municipalities.

As Program Director Jess Wreyford explains, ''What sets MADE apart is its transdisciplinary approach. Rather than being solely an engineering program, MADE brings together expertise from environmental science, design, engineering, and other fields, while actively engaging stakeholders and the city itself as a living laboratory. Professors, thesis supervisors, and practitioners from diverse backgrounds work alongside students to explore how cities can become more just, resilient, and regenerative.'' Through this collaborative learning environment, MADE equips students with the ability to integrate technical, social, environmental, and design perspectives. In doing so, it prepares them for the reality of professional practice, where urban transformation depends on collaboration across disciplines and sectors. Hear from six MSc MADE alumni about how they apply their urban engineering skills in practice.

Engineers of the future

Lotte Geeraedts

Klaas Tromp

Maartje Molenaar

Class of 2020

Class of 2021

Research: Citizen engagement in circular transitions Current post: Innovation Manager in Green and Water maintenance, City of Amsterdam and Research Fellow at AMS Institute Role today: Connecting research and innovation, implementing circular material use and climate adaptation in public space

Research: Experience-focused design research Current post: Assistant Project Manager for the bridges and quay walls program at City of Amsterdam Ingenieursbureau Role today: Managing the replacement of five historic bridges in the Wallen district, developing a strategy for maintaining sluices throughout the city

Research: How local urban agriculture can support everyday healthy food choices Current post: Sustainable Area Development Advisor, City of Amsterdam Role today: Realizing the City's sustainability ambitions in new construction and transformation projects, advising on climate adaptation, energyefficient construction, circular construction, and biodiversity

“The MSc MADE program equipped me for working for the municipality. Many subjects in the curriculum involved problems and cases related to the physical public domain. For my living lab project, we even collaborated directly with the City of Amsterdam. There is still plenty of room to apply academic knowledge in practice: for example, innovations and urban concepts such as Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) and Environmental Cost Indicators (ECIs) seemed like general knowledge to me. I was surprised by how much the professional world still doesn't know.”

“MSc MADE's interdisciplinary approach taught me to build bridges across disciplines and interests. I not only look at technical solutions but also at the social and economic impact of decisions. I regularly draw on my experience with co-creation and stakeholder engagement to arrive at widely supported solutions. The program gave a unique perspective. I see climate adaptation not only as a technical challenge but also as an opportunity to strengthen social cohesion and improve the quality of life in neighborhoods. This broad perspective is valuable in a complex urban environment such as Amsterdam.”

“The transition from research to municipal work was a natural step for me. I’m interested in the intersection of urban development and politics, and I wanted to work for a public organization because I was curious about the link with politics and the opportunity to make a big impact in practice. But translating academic concepts into government is not always easy. Relevant questions are completely different in both worlds, and it is a challenge to get them aligned.” Her prior experience during her studies on a project for the City of Rotterdam led her to apply for a technical traineeship with the City of Amsterdam. Geeraedts is also working on the Urban Plastic Soup project for AMS Institute.

Today Tromp brings specific abilities to the workplace, such as new visions on innovation, a fresh look at possibilities no one had considered. He applies his knowledge of the complexity of urban challenges and a broader awareness of which stakeholders to include, especially those without a voice.

Molenaar’s motivation for working for the City of Amsterdam was partly because of its progressive approach to sustainability, innovation, and urban development. “This position gave me the opportunity to contribute to concrete projects that directly impact the city and its residents,” she said.

Engineers of the future

Simon Drolsbach

Thomas van der Deijl

Abbe Hekkert

Class of 2023

Class of 2024

Class of 2025

Research: Analyzing the influence of spatial characteristics on cycling route choices in Amsterdam Current post: Advisor specializing in Sustainable Mobility and Area development at consulting and engineering firm Witteveen+Bos Role today: Guidance on mobility issues related to area development: parking, shared mobility, pedestrian routing

Research: Analyzing the effects of public collective collaboration on urban commons governance Current post: Citizens and Energy Transition at !WOON foundation Role today: Assisting Amsterdam residents with housing challenges

Research: Degradation of organic matter in dredge sediment Current post: Co-founder of Blauwe Bagger, circular dredging solutions Role today: Revolutionizing the dredging industry by recycling sand, clay, loam, and organic matter for various sectors

“The MADE Entrepreneurial Skill course pushed me to create solutions and ensure others see their value. This problem-solving mindset remains a key part of my everyday work. In my earlier studies, I learned to analyze problems; through the MSc MADE program, I learned to focus on solving those problems. Since space scarcity is already a concern in the Netherlands and is increasing, we need to improve our strategies.” To do that, Drolsbach looks beyond borders to learn from best practices elsewhere. Japan has been managing space limitations for a long time, and he feels there's much to gain from their experience when it comes to using space efficiently and developing adaptable solutions. Such considerations apply to his own work, developing tools to model and predict areas with higher pedestrian activity to enhance walkability in new neighborhoods.

His experience in the MSc MADE program has helped him develop the ability to think on different levels and balance abstract ideas with practical application. “When engaging with municipalities and cooperatives, I can relate to geographic analysis theory,” van der Deijl explains. “But by visiting neighborhoods and speaking with residents, I can turn these theoretical concepts into real-world implications for citizens.” At !WOON, van der Deijl and the team support residents facing the energy transition by providing information, participating with cooperatives and governments, and considering citizens' roles. When homeowners' associations aim to make the energy switch, it becomes more of a social challenge. Shifting away from natural gas as an energy source is a complex system to manage, with many regulations and contacts to navigate. So he helps with initiatives for the energy transition: how to communicate it with neighbors? And how to ensure everyone is on the same page?

“I was drawn to MSc MADE because of its wide approach to complex urban challenges. People from all disciplines are joining this program, which creates a broad view of problems. I learned that involving the right people early in the process through co-creation is essential. What I enjoy most is fostering collaboration to develop solutions, because ultimately, solving these issues can't be accomplished alone.” Hekkert not only co-founded Blauwe Bagger during his studies, but the MADE program also motivated him to establish the Circulaire Bagger Consortium, which unites stakeholders involved in the dredged material chain to promote recycling. Cities produce enormous amounts of waste materials, including dredged materials, the biggest waste stream in the Netherlands. Particularly in a delta like the Netherlands, Hekkert now works to ensure less dredged material goes to waste.

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Energy transition

Fair energy, in practice Heating and powering cities for everyone

The Republica development is one result of transforming a former industrial neighborhood into a low-carbon, smart Positive Energy District with mixed uses, employing a smart microgrid and aquifer thermal storage. © Maikel Samuels

The energy transition is rapidly reshaping urban life in Amsterdam. Heat pumps for centuries-old buildings, solar panels on rooftops, and electric vehicles in the streets. The city is witnessing a system upgrade, and this new “hardware” sends the message: fossil fuels out, sustainable energy in.

But Amsterdam’s goals of phasing out natural gas by 2040 and reaching climate neutrality by 2050 take more than just technology. It takes a resilient, just, and regenerative energy transition. AMS Institute and its partners work on a fundamental shift with the following dream: transforming urban energy systems into decentralized, inclusive networks where neighborhoods actively produce, share and manage energy.

Energy transition

ATELIER Designing positive energy districts

One of the sharpest tests came through ATELIER, a 6.5-year EU-funded project exploring how urban neighborhoods can become Positive Energy Districts (PEDs)— areas that generate more energy than they consume. The goal: actively contribute to grid stability and a resilient energy system. The collaborative governance structure connected the City with knowledge institutes, industry partners, communities, and innovation networks to accelerate the local energy transition. “A resilient, just and regenerative energy future is not a technical challenge alone. It is a systems question at the heart of how cities evolve,” said Maike Simmes, pictured (above, center) at the Energie Lab Zuidoost seminar. Simmes, one of AMS Institute's Strategic Program leads, went on to underscore that “broad prosperity, social equality, and health are all at stake. Think of people living in cold, poorly insulated homes, facing higher costs and worse outcomes. The energy transition must address all of this, not just the grid.” AMS Institute and its partners work on transforming urban energy systems into decentralized, inclusive networks. Two projects show what blending the technical, social, and spatial planning aspects of that can look like in practice.

ATELIER tools: Technical innovation alone is not enough These challenges highlighted the importance of establishing appropriate governance structures, sustainable business models, and community trust from the beginning. To support cities and practitioners across Europe in advancing similar transitions, the project developed a set of practical resources, including the PED Planning Guide, the Innovation Atelier Guide for setting up multiactor collaboration structures, and a Best Practice Booklet. Cities can access courses through the PED Learning Platform, designed to support capacity building and the wider energy transition.

Amsterdam Living Labs: Poppies and Republic

Amsterdam was one of two ATELIER 'Lighthouse Cities'. AMS Institute, TNO, and partners supported the City in establishing successful Living Labs (Innovation Ateliers) at two newly built mixed-use developments in Amsterdam Noord, Buiksloterham: Poppies and Republica. Both served as real-life testing environments for Positive Energy District solutions, combining all-electric infrastructure, smart grids, solar panels, flexible energy systems, and shared community spaces. “The pilots themselves proved important for validating a set of solutions, but it was establishing the innovation ecosystem and governance structures that can be even more important,” said AMS Institute Urban Living Lab Developer Juanita Devis Clavijo, who was responsible for the monitoring and evaluation of the Innovation Ateliers in Amsterdam, Bilbao, and six Fellow Cities. “The latter creates an extended impact, learning from the experimentation independently of whether the experiment works or not.” For example, one experiment that failed was the battery planned for Republica. During implementation, the development faced significant grid congestion and therefore received a fraction of its requested connection capacity. But thanks to TNO’s digital twin developed early on, the project team was still able to simulate system performance and optimize the control of flexible assets, including battery systems. Republica demonstrated that operating within grid constraints is possible through the combination of a smart Energy Management System (EMS), flexible energy assets, and a multimodal heating system. The lessons are all carrying over beyond the project. “What ATELIER made very clear is that the energy transition has to be designed into such a neighborhood from the start. It is about technology, but also about ownership, financing, collaboration, and trust,” mentioned Sarah Bork, Head of Innovation at the Municipality of Amsterdam. “As a municipality, the next step is to take what worked in Buiksloterham and build it into the everyday practice of area development, so innovation can move from one exceptional project to many places in the city.”

FAIR ENERGY

Energy transition

Subsidies, energy coaching, or renovations? While ATELIER worked at the scale of districts and grids in Amsterdam Noord, AMS Institute researcher Joe Llewellyn went door to door for a Living Lab called Energie Lab Zuidoost (Energy Lab Southeast), co-led by AMS Institute, a coalition of universities, and the City. “We were interested in what the effects of two of our policies — energy coaching and subsidies — would have on the energy bills of households. And how that difference compares with a newly-renovated house, to clearly see what policy works best,” said Dian Kroes, policymaker at the Municipality of Amsterdam who initiated the project.

“Energy coaching helps residents save more money, and renovations are better at reducing gas usage.” JOE LLEWELLYN | RESEARCH FELLOW AT AMS INSTITUTE AND ACTION RESEARCHER AT THE CITY OF AMSTERDAM

Two AMS Institute projects investigated the differences. Llewellyn visited nearly 370 homes, thermal camera in one hand, LiDAR scanner in the other, to understand what the energy transition actually looks like from inside a poorly insulated flat belonging to a low-income household. What he found was a trifecta of pressure: rising bills, homes that cannot hold heat, and residents making ends meet. His work, alongside the MIT Senseable City team at AMS Institute, found that government subsidies had little impact on energy poverty, which affects 500,000 homes in the Netherlands. Energy coaching — a volunteer visiting residents at home, giving advice and building knowledge — reduced bills by around €90 a month. Renovations (new insulation materials) reduced bills by around €110. “In the winter the level of comfort skyrocketed,” said resident Jim Alderden. “It is nice to have lower bills. And for me, and I think for most people, to feel such an improved comfort level in your own house is so important.” “We now use the findings as Stadsdeel Zuidoost in our collaboration with different departments where we try to implement these findings in our policies. For now, we are advocating for energy coaching in renovated buildings to stimulate reducing energy consumption even further,” Kroes said.

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Every house call traced the experience of residents such as Jim Alderden, who applied the tips and equipment offered by Llewellyn’s energy coaching. Watch the video here.

Energy transition

More on Energie Lab Zuidoost Energie Lab Zuidoost and the AMS Institute Urban Energy team work to form inclusive and equitable energy systems. “Our projects connect research with policy, but they also include community members as we conduct real-world experiments on how energy is created, used, stored, and shared,” said Dorus Stokhof, Program Developer for Urban Energy at AMS Institute. “ELZO is a unique structure for continuous, place-based research. Every researcher who comes in builds upon what came before,” program manager Annoesjka Nienhuis from the City's Innovation and Sustainability department added. Each step serves to accelerate the energy transition, while “the knowledge stays, the relationships stay — because we look at both the technical and the just side of the transition, together with local partners, government, and knowledge institutions.”

The community gathered at the annual ELZO seminar in March 2026. © Paco Nuñez | Studio MBK

OBA Next in Kraaiennest has become a strategic home for ELZO's knowledge-sharing work. Libraries are one of the few places in the Netherlands where every age group and background walks through the same door, an ideal bridge between academic research and the neighborhood it serves.

“Bridge builders are trusted people in the community that translate information, reduce fear, and reach residents in ways the municipality can't,” said Aman Walia of ELZO’s Groene Hub Living Lab. When collaboration or the energy transition prove difficult, labs like ELZO are designed to keep going long after any single grant cycle ends. Ellen Nieuweboer from Municipality of Amsterdam elaborated that “to apply these innovations in practice, you need a droplet first. Only then can you create a ripple effect.” ELZO's backbone is a manifesto shared by the City of Amsterdam, AMS Institute, Urban Energy Institute TU Delft, Hogeschool van Amsterdam and the UvA that all researchers working in Zuidoost have signed, committing them to build on preceding work, generate tangible value, and give back to the community. When one researcher moves on, the knowledge, relationships, and trust remain. Over time, ELZO’s focus has expanded to include circular construction and climate adaptation, reflecting the reality that in a neighborhood like Zuidoost, these challenges cannot be separated.

Mobility monitoring

Less gridlock, more flow Walking, cycling, and crowd control

Public spaces are under growing pressure from events, tourism, and daily traffic. Around hot spots and public transport hubs, this leads to crowding - not just among pedestrians, but increasingly among cyclists too - compromising safety, comfort, and traffic flow. As public space itself is finite, AMS Institute has spent more than a decade helping Amsterdam and other growing cities keep things running safely and smoothly. Since 2015, AMS Institute, together with TU Delft, has collaborated with the City of Amsterdam to monitor and analyze pedestrian and cyclist movements (active modes) in the city. The work began with a prototype: during SAIL 2015, one of the world's largest outdoor events, pedestrian flows were monitored and visualized in real time for the first time. Data from cameras, Wi-Fi, social media, and GPS were used to generate insights into density, speed, travel time, and sentiment, demonstrating the practical value of crowd monitoring.

Mobility monitoring

Researchers working on mobility monitoring systems at AMS Institute.

From research to real-world impact

This laid the foundation for an ongoing ecosystem of collaboration, leading to new research projects such as Allegro, Think Fast Go Slow, and CityFlows, which modeled pedestrian and cyclist flows, tested sensor technology, and developed decision-support systems. This research underpinned the Crowd Monitoring System Amsterdam (CMSA, in Dutch, LVMA), which is now further developed and operated by the City of Amsterdam. Current-day examples include use at events such as Kingsday or concerts at Johan Cruijff Arena and day-to-day monitoring at the ‘De Wallen’ area. The CMSA also laid the groundwork for the systematic rollout of similar crowd safety systems now operating in cities worldwide, for locations where crowd safety could be at risk due to high density or peak demand. This research connects directly to the City's spatial policy. In 2023, the City of Amsterdam stated in the strategic framework Amsterdam maakt ruimte (Amsterdam Makes Space) that it aims to create more space for its residents. Alderman for Mobility Elise Moeskops: “Public space only truly serves its inhabitants when it’s not only a place to get from A to B but also serves as a space to meet and interact. For that to happen, we need to slow down our city and create space for people.”

New tools for a shared public space

The growing ambition to make space for pedestrians and cyclists has also broadened the scope of research, leading to proven pilots that directly improve walkability and pedestrian flow in cities. Tools developed within DRO-DMI (a consortium that

AMS Institute is part of, that helps public organizations digitally orchestrate the use of public space) allow planners to model pedestrian flows, assess street walkability, and allocate scarce public space more effectively. In the City of Almere, this feeds directly into the redesign of the city center. Stef Klompmaker (data analyst): “It is incredibly useful to know where people walk, so that you can target specific measures to those locations - whether it concerns social safety, installing additional lamp posts, or planting trees.” Crowd monitoring systems now help cities safeguard public safety as urban spaces grow more crowded. “Since 2015, these systems have helped us better track how pedestrians and cyclists move, with behavioral analysis deepening our understanding of what matters to them in public space”, explained Dorine Duives, Director of the Active Mode Lab at TU Delft. During the most recent edition of SAIL, this work continued with various data collection methods tested once more, including new approaches on the water. “It gave practitioners confidence that these innovative systems could make a difference when it mattered most.” Duives also noted that we've only seen the tip of the iceberg. Questions remain: why does the Netherlands have so many single-bicycle accidents? How do we make pedestrian infrastructure accessible to everyone? Looking ahead, Duives argues that the challenge of the next decade is not whether we can measure ever more intelligently, but whether we do so responsibly. “With AMS Institute, TU Delft is working on crowd management systems that contribute to safety, while privacy, transparency, and societal values are central from the design stage onward. Responsible use should not be an afterthought, but the starting point.”

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Entrepreneurship

Five great startups © Maarten Nauw

Celebrating five years of the AMS Startup Booster “Five years of building an urban tech incubator have grown into a thriving ecosystem and network of city entrepreneurs, spawning programs like Startup Booster, Amsterdam Circular, and most recent, our UrbanTech Copilot.” STEPHAN VAN DIJK | HEAD OF INNOVATION, AMS INSTITUTE

Entrepreneurship

With roots at AMS Institute (for the REPAiR and CINDERELA projects), GeoFluxus still collaborates with AMS Institute on tackling waste logistics with the City for the Schone Binnenstad project.

Over the past five years, the AMS Institute’s Entrepreneurship team has been supporting more than 150 early-stage startups to evolve into validated, impact-driven urban tech companies. Firmly embedded within Amsterdam’s innovation ecosystem, the program connects talent with research, networks, and real-world demand, all in the name of creating real positive impact for cities. Founders are challenged to rethink their urban tech ideas from the ground up. Rather than building solutions in isolation, they learn to deeply understand their potential market. Workshops, coaching, and hands-on validation help teams test their ideas but also develop what it really means to build teams and navigate uncertainty. “Five years ago, we built the Booster around a simple principle: execution beats theory every time. Customer conversations, real-world testing, and continuous iteration will teach you more than months of researching and planning ever can. Our goal was to help founders go from zero to one, leaving the program with a validated opportunity, a tested solution, and ideally their first pilot, customer, or market traction, all within five months.” “Watching teams from those early batches still out there solving urban challenges at scale today, from energy and mobility, to circularity and beyond, is exactly what we built this program for”, said Booster lead Ioannis Ioannidis, pictured here with other budding founders.

Geofluxus A long-standing success story What started as research at TU Delft, GeoFluxus has grown into an internationallyactive company helping governments and industries rethink waste. Co-founders Arnout Sabbe and Rusne Sileryte built a SaaS platform that maps complex waste streams and identifies smarter, and more circular ways to process them. Alumni of the very first Booster cycle, they first had to bridge a significant gap. “We had to learn an entirely new language: how to turn scientific research into a company that solves a real market problem,” says Sabbe, who explained how the AMS Startup Booster was instrumental in making it happen.

For the AMS Startup Booster program’s anniversary, we spotlight standout ventures from its diverse portfolio. Where are they now, and what impact are they making on the city?

The challenge was not on scaling up, but on finding a product-market fit. And it worked. “When you're in a sales conversation and you feel that everything you say is confirmed or repeated back by the customer, then you know you're working on a topic that has real future potential.” Today, their platform automates waste reporting and analysis, replacing hours of manual work with real-time insights and recommendations. GeoFluxus is active in more than 15 countries, serving large companies in construction, manufacturing, petrochemicals, agri-food, and public authorities.

Entrepreneurship

OJOA

Upcycling discarded produce Marie Degoulet started with a simple idea: to make it easier to bring more nature, joy and taste into everyday life. That became OJOA, a startup transforming “imperfect” fruit and vegetables that would otherwise go to waste into snacks and drink enhancers for the health-conscious.

Tiger parts

Scaling up repairability

When François Lesage helped a friend repair a broken part in a 1948 champagne bottling machine, he discovered a much larger problem. Across Europe, older machines are scrapped simply because replacement parts are no longer produced. Tiger Parts was founded to change that. The startup reverse-engineers hard-to-find mechanical components and connects customers with a network of manufacturing partners across Europe and India to reproduce them on demand. “Why would you replace something when you know it can still work? The mission is to maintain the old and push repairability,” Lesage said. According to Lesage, the Startup Booster gave him “all the methodologies, the tools, the contacts that I wouldn't have had by myself. The Startup Booster really helps you not to lose a lot of time.” It has since launched its platform and is ramping up. The Booster program helped sharpen that mission by challenging assumptions and connecting the team directly with potential customers, many of which keep coming back for more orders: an early sign the model works. The next frontier: using AI to cut the cost of reverse engineering, eventually making repair accessible not just for industry but for individual consumers and community repair initiatives.

The AMS Startup Booster was a turning point because it pushed Degoulet to move beyond ideas and into action. “The program really forced me to get into the field and speak directly with consumers,” she says. Early market tests revealed that customers wanted more convenient formats, leading OJOA to pivot from fruit powders to the solid elixirs and crunchy fruit snacks it offers today. The program also provided the space, ecosystem and accountability that can shape a tangible product and business. Since the Booster days, the growing business enjoys increasing demand and is scaling distribution, building partnerships with shops and wellness spaces in Amsterdam, and exploring opportunities with larger retailers. OJOA continues to work directly with farmers and food surplus platforms to rescue overstock fruit and give it a second life.

Entrepreneurship

The Swap Club

Swapping ideas for strategy

©>>

An estimated 280,000 garments are thrown away every day in the Netherlands, not because they are worn out, but because consumers lack reuse options. The Swap Club offers an alternative. Founded by Gokce Iliklier, it is a digital points-based urban reuse platform where items are assessed on arrival and converted into digital points that never expire. Customers spend points at pop-up events held across hotels, museums, libraries, and offices in Amsterdam. Joining the AMS Startup Booster was as much about emotional survival as strategy. “I was also about to quit, because it's hard to build a new business model, especially in circularity, where there is not much knowledge or support in the market,” Iliklier said. The program brought structure, community, and strong timing: her future co‑founder Megan de Klein joined just as it began.

Citypump-E

Construction sites across Amsterdam run on diesel pumps that are noisy, polluting, and inefficient. Citypump-E is determined to replace them. Founded by Daniël Geerling, it is a compact, electric, multipurpose pump system for construction sites, sewer works, and water management that outperforms existing electric alternatives on efficiency.

When you have to go full throttle

Last year the platform collected 40,000 items and recirculated around 70% back into the local market. Since April 2024, The Swap Club has grown to six events per month, added a monthly membership program, and organises B2B events. Like OJOA, The Swap Club joined Amsterdam Circular, seeking the investment needed to open a permanent clubhouse and take the platform to the next level.

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“We can build machines,” he said. “But ‘playing startup’ is a different trade entirely.” The program helped him present professionally, navigate public procurement, and broaden his approach to financing.

Before joining the booster, a €290,000 subsidy for research and development marked a turning point for Daniël Geerling, who then developed the business case during his time in the AMS Startup Booster. He now aims to have 20 to 30 units operational by year's end, with pilots planned in Amsterdam.

Autonomous Cargo

From canals to cargo lanes Waterborne logistics in action Not a distant vision, but a tangible system taking shape on the water in canal cities, where visible movement is driven by largely invisible layers of engineering, infrastructure and regulation. On June 30, 2026, an autonomous electric cargo vessel navigated Amsterdam’s historic canals for the first time. It sailed independently along a predefined route, with a licensed captain on board to monitor operations and intervene when necessary, ensuring compliance with existing safety criteria. Developed by Zoev City (electric vessels and freight units) and Roboat, now an independent company rooted in AMS Institute and MIT research, the system combines Roboat’s sensor-based autonomous navigation with Zoev’s zero-emission waterborne transport. Containers are transferred from vessel to quay and onward via compact electric vehicles for last-mile delivery. The impact is significant: less pressure on quays and roads, lower emissions, and higher logistics capacity in dense urban areas. In Amsterdam and other canal cities like Paris, Utrecht or Leiden, these systems could reshape urban freight flows.

As Amsterdam Deputy Mayor Elise Moeskops said: “With new technologies such as autonomous vessels, government should not only watch from the sidelines, but actively think along and participate.” Part of the European-funded metaCCAZE program, the pilot reflects a full-circle moment. It marks the journey from AMS Institute and MIT research to real-world deployment, with AMS coordinating urban mobility innovation across cities, authorities and industry.

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Autonomous Cargo

Sensing technology

MIT and AMS Institute The next five years in biodiversity science

Simone Erba's work generates photorealistic insect images to address gaps in training datasets, especially for rare species. © Maarten Nauw

Sensing technology

“It’s fantastic to continue our collaboration in such a progressive city like Amsterdam, where we can learn together and test advanced and imaginative technologies in real urban environments, turning bold ideas into practical solutions for the city of tomorrow.” CARLO RATTI | PROFESSOR AT MIT SENSEABLE CITY LAB & AMS PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

For more than a decade, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have been embedded at AMS Institute. They conduct ambitious urban research in Amsterdam's parks, canals, and beneath the canopy of its trees as Senseable City Amsterdam (SCA). It is MIT's longest-running among its Senseable Global Labs. SCA is the bridge between technological developments at MIT and how these developments could be applied in the city. Amsterdam is its testing ground. January 2026 marked the extension of this research initiative for another five years through 2030. 3D printed autonomous boat. © Roboat.tech

Glancing back on the first ten years, and peeking into its future, SCA has leveraged developments into robotics, computer vision, sensor systems, and advanced remote sensing to design what Amsterdam might look like in the future.

MIT’s first decade of tangible impact

Åse Håtveit (AMS Institute & MIT Senseable City Lab Research Fellow) demonstrating the Sensing Garden device Flik designed to monitor flying insects, like pollinators, in the city. © Alex Schröder

With MIT, TU Delft, Wageningen University & Research, and the City of Amsterdam, the first decade has yielded tangible research outcomes. To date, Senseable City Amsterdam has more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications, in top-tier journals including Nature Communications and Scientific Reports. It maintains a broad portfolio of applied research projects, a few highlighted here among the most memorable and visible around town.

Roboat

The world's first prototype of a fully autonomous vessel for urban waterways evolved into an independent maritime Startup. Roboat is now supporting captains on

Sensing technology

urban ferries using sensor-driven autonomy systems. These can be retrofitted on any vessel, making shipping safer and more efficient.

Octopus

Octopus is a low-cost, open-source environmental sensing device mountable on traffic lights, mailboxes, backpacks, or bike racks. Its modular design empowers local communities to choose what they monitor: air quality, humidity, temperature, or other environmental variables. The device displays data clearly and connects to other sensors, requiring no specialized expertise. Recently, Maré, the largest informal settlement in Rio de Janeiro, deployed Octopus to produce an environmental assessment of the area, yielding greater awareness and resilience at the local scale. A step-by-step guide assists users in 3D printing, soldering, and coding the device.

B++

B++ addresses the projected extinction of 65% of insect species with an open-source computer vision model that detects insects at 60 times the scale of existing systems, enabling rapid biodiversity monitoring and providing accessible tools to monitor pollinator and ecosystem health across climates.

Shaded Politics

Visualization of the developed computer vision model in the B++ project. © SCL Amsterdam

“Cities are a driver of the rapid decline of biodiversity, yet they can start playing a positive role in the fight.” TITUS VENVERLOO | SCL LEAD, AMS INSTITUTE

Among recent academic publications, the project ‘’Shaded Politics’’ stands out for its examination of of shade distribution in Amsterdam, as part a broader survey of nine global cities. To varying degrees, the study found that lower-income and outer neighborhoods receive significantly less sidewalk shade than wealthier ones, despite facing greater heat. The gap persists even in cities with plenty of shade overall, where wealthier areas hold a disproportionate share. Stockholm showed the widest gap, though from a high baseline. It is the most shaded city in the study, so its inequality is about distribution, not scarcity. (Even its least-shaded neighborhoods stay comparatively well covered, while wealthier areas enjoy even more.) Amsterdam and Boston were closer to equal for the population overall, though gaps widened along income lines. “This was the first study to map pedestrian-level shade inequality across nine diverse cities at this resolution,” said Lukas Beuster, Research Fellow at AMS Institute and the MIT Senseable City Lab. The study, a collaboration between TU Delft, Wageningen University & Research, MIT, and AMS Institute, was published in Nature Communications in 2026. Scan the QR code to read the paper.

The findings also received coverage in data-driven newsletter Not-Ship and in nul20 that summer. “Shade is the most effective way to cut heat on a street, and yet cities hand it out unevenly. The goal isn’t only to close that gap, but to treat shade as a public good: something every street can count on, like clean water or a paved street.”

Future urban biodiversity work

Senseable City Amsterdam's next phase will focus on developing and deploying novel sensing systems for urban biodiversity and environmental monitoring, from insect detection to green-space management. The team is working on a project called Sensing Garden, in which they develop new tracking and classification algorithms for insect species recognition to be deployed in Amsterdam. To improve the current sensing system, the researchers use generative AI to augment ecological datasets and address data scarcity for rare species. In a project called TIMBY (Trees In My Back Yard), SCA maps the ecological structures of Amsterdam with remote sensing techniques.

Sensing technology

Visualization of the pedestrian accessible shade distribution in Amsterdam, part of the Shaded Politics project by MIT Senseable City Lab. © Senseable City Amsterdam

Another project on the horizon is BioDenCity, deploying low-cost edge-computing devices paired with AI that identifies insects at species-level. It's already being deployed across Amsterdam's sports parks Schellingwoude (in Amsterdam-Noord) and Eendracht (Amsterdam West), with citywide rollouts planned for 2027 under the EU-funded Biodiversa+ program. This will extend the methodology across European cities (Amsterdam, Gothenburg, Milan, Tampere) comparing biodiversity in dense urban contexts.

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Members of MIT, AMS Institute, and the City of Amsterdam gathered to mark the renewed commitment at the Institute. © Marije Kuiper

AMSTERDAM AS A PIONEER IN URBAN ECOLOGY As MIT gains access to Amsterdam as a living laboratory, Senseable City Amsterdam positions the city as the world's premier testing ground for regenerative urbanism. “Pilots for novel green interventions and automated monitoring position Amsterdam as a global blueprint for ecological urban design,” said Titus Venverloo, MIT Senseable City Amsterdam lead. The partnership with TU Delft and Wageningen deepens local scientific expertise while connecting the city to world-class researchers.

Plastic pollution

Solving the urban plastic soup Capturing plastic waste in windy, waterborne cities It’s a common sight in Amsterdam: cigarette butts flicked onto the street, discarded food wrappers lodged between parked bicycles, and packaging blowing into the water. The city loses an estimated 16 metric tons of plastic (1.9 million items) to the IJ River every year.

AMS Institute project coordinator Francesca Alberti and Noria engineer Joris Wiggins inspect the waste captured by the Canal Cleaner on the east side of Amsterdam Central Station. © Alex Schröder

Plastic pollution

A map of monitoring locations in the study area. Yellow circles indicate locations where plastic flowed through, purple circles show accumulation locations. The yellow arrows show the main transport direction of the plastic, the white arrows indicate the flow direction of the IJ river into the North Sea. The first letter of each monitoring location indicates its city district.

A four-year project called Solving the Urban Plastic Soup that culminated in 2026 monitored 20 locations across the city’s canal network for the most granular picture to date of what types of plastic Amsterdam is losing and where. It also showed how two innovations capturing small plastic pollution proved effective enough that the City of Amsterdam adopted them into its permanent infrastructure.

Certain spots became living labs throughout Amsterdam, testing how best to collect the smaller, floating pollution that Waternet’s dredging boats are missing. This phase brought together three clever devices that collect floating plastic waste, the Shoreliner from TAUW, Noria’s CanalCleaner, and The Great Bubble Barrier’s Bubble Barrier — installations that use wind, a curtain of bubbles, currents, or flow to direct waste into cages.

As the project name describes, floating plastic accumulates into a soup in certain corners or under bridges all over town, much of it blown into the water by the wind. Managing the entire water chain for 1.4 million residents, Waternet has four boats that dredge several thousand kilograms of trash daily. Researchers from Wageningen University & Research at AMS Institute recorded an estimated 3.67 items still entering the IJ River every minute (that’s 5,280 items per day).

Actively capturing waste

Researchers also listed the most abundant types of plastic: food wrappers lead the count at over one-fifth of all items, followed by foam fragments, soft plastic fragments, cigarette filters, drink cans, bags, bottles, food packaging, small bags, and caps and lids. “These account for 80% of all floating objects, and all represent single-use products, designed to be discarded,” stated the project’s paper, Plastic pathways and intervention strategies in urban water systems (Environmental Challenges, June 2026).

So far, Amsterdam has implemented one Bubble Barrier and one CanalCleaner. The City will purchase and place more such devices in the near future. The team first predicted the cages would need emptying only once per month, but in actuality, “we empty the CanalCleaner and Bubble Barrier three times a week using our waste collection boat,” said Jonathan Guijt, Operations Manager for Waternet. “It's a straightforward process. We pull up alongside the installation, lift the collection cage with a crane, empty it into the boat, and clean up whatever's floating around it with landing nets.” While the waste problem persists, installing effective devices to combat it marks a triumph for the Plastic Soup consortium: strategic collection, interception, and retrieval in the city's waters is working. “We didn’t expect to collect this much waste at that location,” said Joris Wiggins, Noria Project Lead and Engineer, whose

Plastic pollution

CanalCleaner can be seen under the bridge on the eastern flank of Centraal Station. “Seeing how much plastic accumulates each day creates a sense of urgency. It pushes municipalities to allocate funding for a problem that was literally underwater until now.” “Their strategic placement, visibility, and emotional appeal also educate and motivate the public to take action,” noted Anne Marieke Eveleens from The Great Bubble Barrier, which continues to collect 80 kg or 15,536 pieces of inorganic debris per month from its permanent location at Westerdok.

Stopping plastic before it reaches the water

“This project helps us understand how big the plastic waste problem in our waterways is and how we can fix it at the end of the pipeline,” said Lotte Geeraedts, Sustainability Specialist at the City of Amsterdam. But collection only treats the end of the pipeline. The longer items stay in the water, the more they break down and become unrecyclable. The project's researchers map seven interventions across a plastic item's life cycle, only two of which happen at the end (see text box on the next page). Dredging bulkier waste from the water costs Amsterdam €3.2 million annually. The broader socioeconomic and environmental costs of plastic

“Their strategic placement, visibility, and emotional appeal also educate and motivate the public to take action.” ANNE MARIEKE EVELEENS | CO-FOUNDER OF THE GREAT BUBBLE BARRIER

pollution, including biodiversity loss, damage to ships and hydraulic infrastructure, and disruptions to shipping, remain largely unaddressed. Reaching the City's 2030 target of drastically reducing plastic leakage will require simultaneous action across the full life cycle, which is why the project targeted every stage and involved government, researchers, stakeholders, and contractors. Amsterdam now has something it lacked three years ago: more devices removing plastic waste from its waterways, an understanding of plastic pollution hotspots specific to Amsterdam, and a set of tools: a flowchart to determine which collection device is best suited to a specific location, a decision-support tool to help prioritize collection interventions, and a set of policy and regulatory recommendations focused on prevention. “The result is a methodology that is documented, tested, and ready to be applied elsewhere,” said Francesca Alberti, Project Manager at AMS Institute. “Other cities with similar waterway systems don't need to start from scratch. We are sharing our data, the monitoring methods, the intervention framework, and tools to assess who is accountable and divide tasks.” Each of these could prove valuable for any port or gateway city like Rotterdam, The Hague, London, Paris, Bangkok, Singapore, and Melbourne.

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Plastic pollution

Cities combatting waterborne waste can adopt the methodology and data here.

SEVEN WAYS TO CURE THE DISEASE Collection and recycling treat the symptom once plastic is already in the water. The project's researchers identify seven interventions across a plastic item's life cycle. Only two happen at the end. Upstream (production and distribution) 1. Reduce plastic packaging 2. Switch to alternative materials Midstream (use) 3. Change consumer behavior 4. Offer deposit-return schemes Downstream (end of life) 5. Collect and intercept 6. Improve recycling Across the chain 7. Extend producer responsibility (EPR): make producers pay for the waste their products create. Tobacco manufacturers, for example, could pay a government fee based on the number of filtered cigarettes they sell, funding litter pickup and campaigns. For a city, EPR is also a way to back the EU's single-use plastics directive.

Event highlights

The year' events

360-degree encounters, sparking collaborative impact

Event highlights

's Fabio Duarte (Associate Director of the MIT Senseable City Lab) presenting at the Opening of the academic year at AMS Institute.

The Opening of the academic year In September 2025, a new cohort of MSc MADE students arrived at Marineterrein Amsterdam under the theme “Reinventing the City: Connecting the Dots, Closing the Loops.” More than the start of a new academic year, this marked a collaborative moment for the entire AMS Institute community. The theme also provided the guiding thread for the AMS Scientific Conference 2026.

In October 2025 and May 2026, 53 urban engineers of tomorrow received their joint MSc MADE diplomas from Wageningen University & Research and TU Delft.

Energie Lab Zuidoost Seminar

Amsterdam Zuidoost is on the frontlines of the urban energy transition. Energy poverty, housing, and social inequality are as much a part of the challenge as solar panels and insulation. In March 2026, Energie Lab Zuidoost (Energylab South East) held its annual seminar at OBA Next Lab, bringing together scientists, students, neighborhood initiatives, and policymakers to work through that complexity together. They asked: What does it actually take to make an impact in a neighborhood, and who gets to define it? Co-led by AMS Institute and the City of Amsterdam, sessions covered energy affordability, biobased construction materials, and local energy initiatives including Life Arenapoort.

It is in encounters where transdisciplinary perspectives meet, and ideas start to connect across disciplines, sectors, and communities. Throughout the year, AMS Institute hosted, co-organized, and contributed to a wide range of events. A selection of key moments hereafter.

Read more about the seminar here.

Themahighlights Event

Find the full conference collection (recaps, videos and more) here.

Scientific Conference

The biennial Scientific Conference returned to Marineterrein's CRCL Park in April 2026, convening over 600 global scientists, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners. Organized around the theme “Connecting the Dots, Closing the Loops,” the three-day event examined systemic solutions for urban resilience, circular economies, and social justice. Across disciplines, the attendees explored how collaboration can address pressing urban challenges, with sessions covering energy transition, circular systems, climate adaptation, food security, and beyond.

“All the speeches and presentations were important, but two keynotes stayed with me. Diederik Samsom spoke about sustainable cities as a social challenge, not just a technical one, and somehow managed to make a room full of researchers feel hopeful. Peter

Pelzer's “rooted imagination” was a reminder that transformation grows from what already exists, from the dots we have not yet connected. Both felt very close to what industrial symbiosis is actually about,” according to Aidana Tleuken, PhD Candidate, Industrial Engineering Management & Science, Universiteit Twente, who presented her own research about modeling hubs for circularity expansion at the AMS Scientific Conference.

Ethics, Art, Tech & Bildung

Technology is reshaping society faster than education can keep up. Most training programs teach people to use new tools, few teach them to question whether they should. Ethics, Art, Tech & Bildung, launched in March 2026 at Marineterrein Amsterdam, takes a different approach. Bringing together 28 students and lecturers from vocational to university level, the eight-week program —

Event highlights Titel

Final showcase Ethics, Art, Tech and Bildung.

Full house at Amsterdam Deep Tech Showcase.

Quay wall section at permanent exposition Amsterdam in Motion.

Zwanet van Lubek presenting at Bloomberg-LSE European City Leadership Initiative.

developed by Peer Academy (ROC van Amsterdam en Flevoland), Codam, AHK, and AMS Institute — combines art, philosophy, and technology to build critical makers, not just capable ones. The result: prototypes, performances, and interventions from innovators who've learned to navigate a digitizing world on their own terms.

Amsterdam Deep Tech

June 2026 marked the Amsterdam Deep Tech Showcase, which brought together founders, researchers, investors, and builders for one curated day ahead of the Hello Tomorrow Global Summit. It was a City of Amsterdam event, in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam UMC, AMS Institute, Amsterdam Science Park, Innovatiefonds Noord-Holland, ROM Inwest and many others. Sessions spanned AI and quantum algorithms; climate technologies and green

chemistry; biotech and medtech, with speakers like Python creator Guido van Rossum, and pioneering biotech founders from Thorizon, Cradle, and VectorY Therapeutics.

Amsterdam in Motion

Ongoing at Cultuurdorp Westergas, Amsterdam in Motion has shown the city’s past, present, and future through the world’s largest 3D city model. The immersive multimedia experience covers two floors and highlights key urban themes, including stories about Amsterdam’s quay walls. This section showcases the important work in NWO-NWA project Urbiquay and the research project Multifunctional Quay Walls.

Bloomberg-LSE European City Leadership Initiative AMS Institute Managing Director Zwanet van Lubek delivered a lecture at the Bloomberg-LSE European City Leadership Initiative in Berlin,

addressing 31 European cities. It is the region’s first professional leadership and management program designed specifically for mayors and senior municipal officials, who will take part in a nine-month program combining classroom learning, fieldwork, and practical application. Her session “Experimental City Hall: Design and Test Within the City” equipped leaders with practical frameworks for tackling complex urban challenges through experimentation, strategic partnerships, and tailored innovation formats. Drawing on local examples, Zwanet guided participants through decomposing “wicked” problems, assessing urgency, and clarifying city government's role relative to external partners. Attendees applied these principles to their own city challenges, exploring how academia, industry, and civic actors drive effective urban innovation.

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A circular city

Building the biobased city Accelerating low-carbon construction The Amsterdam Metropolitan Area faces a defining challenge: delivering tens of thousands of new homes by 2030 while drastically reducing the environmental impact of construction. AMS Institute, TU Delft, Wageningen University & Research and regional partners are working together to tackle this challenge. The case for biobased building

According to the UN Environment Program's Global Status Report 2024/25, the construction sector and built environment account for around 34% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Around 26% comes from the operation of buildings, including heating, cooling and ventilation, while the remaining 8% is associated with the extraction, production and use of construction materials such as concrete, steel, glass and bricks. In well-insulated homes, these embodied, or material-related, emissions can account for up to 46% of a building's lifetime energy use (Koezjakov et al., 2020). Transportation and logistics represent about an additional 10-15% of embodied carbon emissions. The use of sustainable, low-carbon materials in construction is essential in achieving global climate goals, and continuing ‘business as usual’ is not an option: it is estimated that if we continue relying on conventional building materials such as concrete, steel and glass, they could account for 35–60% of the remaining carbon budget available to keep global temperature rise below 2°C (Müller et al., 2013). This means that meeting the housing challenge requires more than simply building more or building faster.

Scientific foundation for timber construction

To address the dual challenge of housing growth and climate action, in 2021, the City of Amsterdam and over seventy other parties, ranging from local governments to construction companies, financiers and real estate developers, signed the Convenant Houtbouw. A publicprivate commitment aiming to realize 20% of new housing in the region in timber or biobased materials by 2025. As co-signers of this Green Deal, AMS Institute and TU Delft, together with a consortium of 14 public and private

partners, provided the underpinning of these political commitments through research into building with timber. BIMZEC (Biobased, Industrialized, Modular, Zero-Emission, Circular) researchers studied the entire construction chain: the sustainable availability of timber and other biobased feedstocks, circular materials, multimodal logistics, zeroemission transport, industrialized construction methods, and the governance frameworks needed to enable large-scale implementation. It culminated in the publication Hoog Hout Haalbaar and several scientific publications. Findings informed procurement criteria for sustainable construction in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area and contributed to national initiatives such as The New Normal, the Dutch framework for circular construction. Progress is already visible: timber construction has grown from around 0.5% of new housing in 2021 to approximately 5% in 2025. The Houtbouw Pact MRA 2026–2030, signed by more than 100 organisations, marks the next phase of scaling implementation.

The next generation of biobased materials While the implementation of biobased insulation and timber construction is gaining momentum, research and innovation remain critical to further facilitate the uptake of biobased materials in the built environment and reduce its environmental footprint.

The BIO-SKIN project (with partners including AMS Institute, TU Delft, Wageningen University & Research, the Municipality of Amsterdam, and others) develops circular, waste-based, biobased and biophilic façades that integrate vegetation into building envelopes. Tested at several locations in and around Amsterdam, these systems reduce materialrelated carbon emissions, while improving biodiversity, mitigating heat-stress and supporting water retention.

A circular city

IOBASE

“Effective end-to-end emission reduction requires integrated rather than isolated solutions. For example, local circular reuse should be combined with zero-emission transport and a finegrained hub infrastructure, and the use of biobased and timber materials requires larger national and regional production capacities.” RUBEN VRIJHOEF | SENIOR RESEARCHER TU DELFT

Beyond buildings and materials

As Amsterdam aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, the construction industry must transform from being responsible for around a third of global emissions to becoming a carbon sink. Circular and biobased construction offer a pathway toward this transition by expanding the solutions available to governments and markets. Yet the BIMZEC research project has shown that technical innovation alone is not enough: implementing these solutions requires changes in governance, design processes and planning. How can we equip urban planners with the information and tools needed to facilitate low-carbon development at the neighborhood level? What infrastructure and industrial capacities are needed to facilitate both biobased construction and the reuse and recycling of construction materials throughout the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region? These questions will grow in importance as cities transition toward circular and regenerative models. Only together can we design urban environments that restore, regenerate and thrive.

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Timber and other biobased materials stand out among lowcarbon alternatives because they offer multiple advantages. Carbon storage Timber and biobased materials store atmospheric CO₂ during growth, turning buildings into temporary carbon sinks. Suitable for industrialized construction methods Engineered wood products such as Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) and glulam are prefabricated with high precision before arriving on site. This reduces construction time, material waste, transport movements and disruption in dense urban areas. Reduced weight, reduced transport emissions Timber and biobased buildings are 10–50% lighter than conventional buildings. This reduces transport emissions CO₂, NOx and PMs considerably, provided the materials are not sourced from far away places.

Reducing embodied carbon combined with additional benefits Beyond reducing embodied carbon, timber and biobased construction can improve indoor comfort, biodiversity and climate resilience.

Find the Hoog Hout haalbaar publication (in Dutch) here.

Multiple applications In addition to structural applications, biobased materials can be used for insulation (e.g. flax-based insulation), façade systems (e.g. biocomposites) and interior materials (e.g. cork).

And why stop there? AMS Institute’s Program Developer Peter Mooij is exploring new material innovations that could enable the large-scale development of fully biobased buildings. The research projects he develops explore how urban organic waste streams can be transformed into valuable construction resources, including bioplastics and biobased flame retardants derived from organic side streams.

Why timber and biobased materials?

Students in the field

Transforming waste collection Heavy garbage trucks are an important factor weakening Amsterdam’s quay walls. But how can the City move away from these vehicles while ensuring household waste is still properly collected?

Find the project report on openresearch.amsterdam.

Working on behalf of the City of Amsterdam's Bridges and Quay Walls Department, MSc MADE students explored how waste collection could be redesigned around Amsterdam’s waterways, developing recommendations that frame the transformation as a socio-technical challenge.

Students in the field

The complete atlas to microplastic pollution Five MSc MADE students collaborated with case owner Embodied Ecologies (coordinated from the University of Wageningen Social Science Group) to make the largely invisible threat of microplastics tangible for the general public. Working with residents, experts and policymakers, they combined the Living Lab Way of Working with ethnography and experimental cartography. The result is an atlas of microplastic pollution that connects scientific research to lived experience, making plastic pollution visible, understandable and actionable.

Visit the project website here.

Climate adaptation

Extreme heat Solutions in planning, policy, and citizen engagement

The threat

AMS Institute research is turning climate projections into tools cities can use for extreme summers. Amsterdam is getting hotter, drier, and wetter. AMS Institute, working with Wageningen University & Research, TU Delft, MIT Senseable City Lab, and city partners, runs the research that shows where heat and drought will hit hardest and what to do about it. Across monitoring, tree selection, shade mapping, and water reuse, the aim is the same: preparedness.

The country has endured several hot summers in recent memory, but the summer of 2018 had record-breaking heat that buckled rail tracks across the Netherlands, seized bridges, and halted metro services. Roads were damaged, water quality dropped, and blue-green algae resulted in closed swimming spots. Amsterdam spent more than €1.4 million replacing dead plants and trees and close to half a million euros on extra irrigation water, according to figures from Een EXTREEM Rapport (An Extreme Report) from the KNMI (the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) in 2025 on weather extremes with major social consequences. AMS Institute’s Gerben Mol and others contributed to the chapter on heat of the KNMI report. Under a high-emissions scenario, days at or above 30°C in Amsterdam are projected to rise from around 4 per year today, to as many as 27 by 2100. The RIVM estimates heat causes around 110 deaths a year in the city. Without adaptation, it projects 215 to 680 a year by 2100 as the population ages and the climate warms. In addition, indirect effects like additional costs of hospital admissions and lower productivity would add to the severity.

Climate adaptation

Measuring where heat hits

Preparation starts with measurements. Gert-Jan Steeneveld, an AMS Institute Principal Investigator and associate professor at Wageningen University, coordinates the Amsterdam Atmospheric Monitoring Supersite, a 24-station network tracking temperature, moisture, wind speed across the city, and the urban carbon footprint. The data shows Amsterdam runs about 3.4°C warmer than the surrounding countryside at night. His group also developed a heat-mapping method used in the city's climate stress tests. “We measure how heat accumulates over time in the city and how it moves into homes, because you cannot adapt what you have not mapped,” Steeneveld said. Indoor heat is the next layer. In the EU-funded I-CHANGE project, AMS Institute and WUR monitor around 100 Amsterdam homes, where indoor temperatures often pass 24°C for long stretches and sometimes exceed 30°C, holding after the outdoor air has cooled. Residents take part in the monitoring, and the team also draws on citizen science and crowdsourcing to widen coverage and connect it to the wellbeing of the residents. Analyzing indoor heat using I-CHANGE monitoring data and historical measurements dating back to 1988, WUR researcher Esther Peerlings (AMS researcher and WUR PhD Candidate Urban Meteorology under Steeneveld’s supervision) found summer indoor temperatures are rising about 0.5°C per decade. For her study published in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society in November 2025, her team analyzed long-term indoor temperature data from seven Dutch houses, spanning up to 27 years, to better understand how indoor temperatures respond to summer heat.

They developed a physics-informed statistical model that integrates outdoor–indoor convection, building conduction, and solar + thermal radiation. “We found that indoor temperatures respond more slowly to outdoor changes, with a typical lag of 260 minutes, and that heatwave signals can persist indoors for about five days,” Peerlings said. This work provides new insights into understanding and improving indoor climate resilience in the face of rising heat events. “That is enormous, and it raises both health risks and energy demand,” added Steeneveld, commenting on his student’s work. “Most people spend 80 to 90% of their time indoors, so indoor temperature decides how livable a home really is.”

Choosing trees that cool

Trees are the city's most effective cooling tool. They can lower air temperature by an average of 2.6°C through evapotranspiration, and reduce radiant heat from streets and buildings by up to 34.5°C. i-Tree 2.0 NL, a three-year project funded by CLICKNL with 28 partners, from TU Delft and internationally renowned design firms (MVRDV, Arcadis), to tree nurseries and eight municipalities, measured the cooling performance of more than 300 urban tree species across their life cycles and mapped over 100 million Dutch trees using satellite imagery. The result is a species shortlist matched to use: linden for narrow street canyons, London plane for parks and open spaces with steady all-day cooling, western red cedar for the full set of cooling traits, and common beech for long-term value as it keeps growing into old age. Two trees on the same street can cool very differently, depending on canopy density, leaf thickness, and how the branches reflect sunlight. Closing this knowledge gap gives cities the insight they need to plant trees that are prepared for the conditions they will face in forty years. © Alex Schröder

“An extreme heatwave puts pressure on transport, water, health, and energy at the same time,” said Gerben Mol, Program Developer for Climate Resilient Cities at AMS Institute. “We treat heat as a system problem, and the case for structural investment is strongest before the next event.”

Explore the entire public report on openresearch.amsterdam.

Climate adaptation

Green beyond the park

Two further projects turn this knowledge into design practice. Effective Green for Climate Adaptation in the City converts established research into ready-to-use guidelines and template designs for standard urban situations, using i-Tree and ENVI-met modeling to quantify cooling and water benefits, and feeds a freely accessible database on what each tree species contributes. A second project examines informal “left-over” green spaces: the vacant lots, overgrown verges, and leftover strips beside railways and highways that cities rarely count as green infrastructure. Both were led by former AMS Research Fellow Sitong Luo. She mapped 286 such spaces in Amsterdam, concentrated in Bijlmer, Amsterdam-Noord, and Westpoort, and developed guidelines to unlock their cooling, stormwater, habitat, and recreation value. These spaces matter most in neighborhoods with few formal parks. “Vacant lots and overgrown verges already cool their surroundings and hold stormwater, but cities rarely count them as green infrastructure,” said Luo. “Small design changes can turn them into usable spaces where parks are scarce.”

Preparing now

Each project gives the city something it can use, from heat maps, a tree shortlist, a water-storage model, or a set of design guidelines. Most of the tools are documented and built to be shared, so other cities facing the same heat and drought can benefit. The KNMI report's central point for AMS Institute and the municipality is that heat cuts across transport, water, health, and housing at once, and the window to build for it is open now.

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Water for dry summers

Heat comes with drought. By spring 2026 the Netherlands had reached a precipitation deficit that placed it among the driest 5% of years since records began in 1906, according to the KNMI. Amsterdam's canal water may become too salty for irrigation by 2050, drinking water is not a sustainable supply for it, and the city's greenery depends on water to keep cooling public spaces. The RainOasis framework, developed by Jorn de Vos, the first Engineering Doctorate graduate from Wageningen University & Research’s Environmental Technology Engineering and AMS Institute, tested whether stored winter rain can meet summer demand. The model found climate change could raise irrigation demand by 10 to 17% under moderate warming and up to 71% under severe warming, while rainwater storage could cover 64 to 94% of the city's needs. A related project, AquaConnect, ran a nanofiltration pilot at the Marineterrein Living Lab that treated wastewater for reuse on parks and trees, a stable dry-season supply that still leaves a brine stream to manage and needs new rules before it can scale. “Amsterdam will need more irrigation water just as its usual sources become less reliable,” said Jorn de Vos. “Stored winter rain can cover most of that gap if the city plans for it now.”