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Altstädter Köln 1922 e.V.

App tracks movement patterns of the Cologne Rose Monday procession


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Displays movement patterns, pauses, speed and problem areas along the route inexpensively

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Optimises Rose Monday Parade routing and management

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App and iot platform provide base for future live data analysis

  • Altstädter Köln 1922 e.V. - App trackt Kölner Rosenmontagszug

    Requirements

    Rose Monday Parade: Improved Structure

    Cologne's Rose Monday Parade is Germany's oldest carnival parade and, with over one million spectators, the highlight of Cologne Carnival. The parade, or “Zoch”, was first held in 1823 but there is something new this year: the floats’ movement within the parade is going to be tracked. The Cologne Carnival Committee, Telekom Security and T-Systems MMS came up with the idea. Behind it lies the hope that the structure of the Rose Monday Parade can be improved, and its progress optimised. The idea is to use GPS to capture data about the movement patterns of the individual floats, in order to identify, for example, where delays tend to occur, where the parade comes to a halt for an unusual length of time, and where floats get dangerously close to one another.
    Altstädter Köln 1922 e.V., one of Cologne's nine traditional carnival clubs, has taken responsibility for driving the project. In December 2017, after a design phase of just under four weeks involving Telekom Security and T-Systems MMS, T-Systems MMS’ specialists began programming the cloud solution, which is based on Microsoft Azure, and it was available on time, early in February, prior to the Rose Monday Parade.

  • Altstädter Köln 1922 e.V. - App trackt Kölner Rosenmontagszug

    Solution

    Intuitive to use for data providers - useful tools for planners

    Initially, at the design stage, the possibility of an Internet of Things (IoT) hardware solution that could be fitted to each float was discussed. But, due to the lack of time before going live with the solution on Rose Monday, the large number of floats and the associated costs for the IoT hardware, the T-Systems MMS team developed a far simpler and more user-friendly solution which runs on the float drivers’ smartphones.
    Using Ionic, an open source web framework for creating hybrid apps, the team proposed a cross-platform app for both Android and iOS devices. In the end, this proposal was implemented, because the float drivers would have a mobile phone with them anyway, so no extra hardware would need to be installed or used.

Each of the carnival societies has its own group login in the app. The float driver, as the data provider, uses this to log in and then selects their vehicle. The float driver then needs do nothing else to capture data, and the GPS tracker runs in the background, energy efficiently, without the screen needing to be active, for example. The driver can see their current location on an interactive map in the app, and thus get visual feedback that the tracker is working correctly.
As network coverage can fluctuate when there is a major event, before the parade the drivers are shown how to reconnect to the Internet after the parade. This ensures that the GPS data that is tracked offline and stored in the app is also transmitted and feeds through to the mobile backend. All the data from the app feeds through to the backend in the cloud – to the “Connected Things Management” IoT platform which is based on Axonize and Microsoft Azure. This results in the platform providing a live overview of the floats with their last transmitted locations. Post-event, the T-Systems MMS’ existing customer flow analysis solution can be used to generate and analyse the paths taken and the heatmap.


  • Altstädter Köln 1922 e.V. - App trackt Kölner Rosenmontagszug

    Benefits

    Optimises routing and detects bottlenecks

    Bearing in mind the 2018 carnival motto “The people of Cologne march to a different beat”, the solution aims to ensure that more of the floats march to the same beat in future parades. The Cologne Carnival organisers are intending to use this year's mobile tracking data to decide on how to optimise the routing for next year. The GPS data is displayed in real time on the city map on the IoT platform which is accessed centrally from the cloud, and it can then be analysed in detail. They can select individual time windows, float sequences, stoppages or route sections on which to base their assessments. They can also display bottlenecks based on a stoppage time which they can choose themselves. The solution also enables movements to be studied in real time afterwards, in order to find out what caused a stoppage or bottleneck. Meanwhile, the app is easy to use for the float drivers, who require neither technical skills nor time investment.
    Then, in the future, by comparing records from different years, conclusions may be drawn about potential improvements and routing, and specific KPIs may even be set for float throughput in particular zones. Live data analysis is another option for the future, with a view to managing the parade in real time. The number of mobile devices that can be tracked can easily be increased, due to the cloud technology being used. This means that the tracking app can also be used for other major events of any type.

About Altstädter Köln 1922 e.V.

Altstädter Köln 1922 e.V. is one of Cologne's venerable carnival clubs and one of those responsible for the annual Rose Monday Parade around the inner city. The club came into being after the First World War and developed out of a bowling club founded in 1905. From this, the “Faithful Old Towners” got together in 1922, their stated aim being “to safeguard the tradition and provision of the genuine, popular Cologne Carnival, particularly upholding Cologne customs, typical Cologne wit and humour and Cologne's dialect and quirks within the traditional, historic Cologne carnival celebrations”. Just two years after the club was established, in 1924, the decision to form a corps was taken. In 1968 the Altstädter club was awarded the honorary title of “Traditional Cologne Carnival Corps”.


 

 

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