Expertise

Frits Claassen is Associate Professor at the Operations Research and Logistics Group. My research aims to contribute particularly to the applicability of Operations Research (OR) models – and solution techniques in practice. My general research objective is to combine the strong elements of normative OR models (i.e. what practice ought to do) with descriptive decision-making (i.e. what practice actually does), such that models and solution approaches arise that provide for insights in what practice should, and actually can do.

Expertise

Academic director of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Big Open and Linked Data (BOLD) Cities. Our agenda concerns the responsible application of data science for public values and the public good in urban environments. This involves anything from smart mobility solutions to data driven benefit systems. As a matter of principle, we collaborate with local government, creative professionals and citizen groups. We designed the SHARED values as a criterion for human centred information technology, and use this in our own research to assess if and how data science projects in the city serve the benefits of the city and its citizens.

Ambitions

There are loads of small and big research projects about the digitisation and datafication of cities. Many cities pride themselves on being ‘smart’. However, to date there is little exchange between the plethora of initiatives, there is little insight in best practice, let alone that scaling and spreading can be considered. Our aim with the ‘Digital Cities and Communities’ theme of the VSNU agenda is to scope existing research, labs, experiments and try-outs, build an ‘observatory’ to monitor future work and establish mechanism for spreading and scaling that are relevant to all partners of the quadruple helix, i.e. knowledge institutes, (local) governments, creative industry and civil society.