Case: Het Noordbrabants Museum
Discovering visitor patterns for Het Noordbrabants Museum
During the Van Goghs Intimi exhibition in Het Noordbrabants Museum (HNBM), the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS), in collaboration with Heijmans and HNBM, conducted a unique experiment that provides insight into the movement and behavioral patterns of visitors to the exhibition – inside and outside the gates of the museum.
JADS students carried out the assignment, under the supervision of researchers from JADS MKB Datalab.
Using sensors to collect data
The Challenge
The Noordbrabants Museum has shown in the past that exhibitions generated extra attention and visitors in the city and generated extra turnover for the retailers and catering industry. Het Noordbrabants Museum wanted to be able to present this information better with the aid of data. In addition, The NoordBrabants Museum would also like to gain insight into visitor flows and behavior in the museum itself. We have developed a proposal in which, together with the Noordbrabants Museum and our cooperation partner Heijmans, we realize a professional and valuable use of sensors (data collection) and presentation of results (data analysis).
What we did
Heijmans installed 75 BeSense sensors in the museum, which form a smart system that measures movements and visitors in the museum in an anonymous way. The resulting data was analyzed by students to define movement patterns within the building. What are the “hotspots” of the exhibition? How can we optimize the route? How many people visit the museum shop? This information can be used to enhance the visitor experience of future exhibitions. Additionally, we placed several wifi sensors in the city centre and one at the museum, so we could anonymously monitor, with consent and on a voluntary basis, visitor movement throughout the city.
The outcome
The total project was divided into several smaller projects, which focused on recommendations for the museum shop, route optimization and traffic into the city centre, derived from the exhibition at the museum.
Unique collaboration
The experiment is a unique collaboration between JADS, HNBM and Heijmans. The field of data science, in which knowledge and skills are used to unlock insights from data, is developing at lightning speed. JADS, a joint initiative of Tilburg University and Eindhoven University of Technology, is the hotspot in the Netherlands in the field of data science, where students, researchers and companies work together to create value using data. Heijmans is increasingly using data to create healthy living environments. Making the built environment ‘smarter’ plays an important role in this.
About the JADS MKB Datalab
The digital transition, while necessary, is sometimes difficult for smaller companies. Entrepreneurs recognize opportunities in the use of data science, but often do not know how to get started. They don’t have the right technical knowledge to use data to create value for themselves and their customers. Through the JADS MKB Datalab we make the knowledge and skills of data scientists accessible to small and medium enterprises. We do this by deploying master students of Data Science from JADS on clearly defined projects.