Inclusive prosperity map project wins funding

A research project that will indicate how inclusive prosperity performs at a local level – from affordable housing and urban poverty to sustainability and traffic safety – has been awarded a € 35,000 kick-starter grant from the Resilient Delta Initiative (RDI), an alliance between TU Delft, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Erasmus MC. Post-doctoral researcher Dr Kees Krul from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) is leading the project called de Brede Welkaart (the inclusive prosperity map). A prototype is currently online at www.bredewelkaart.nl, and the project partners are TU Delft, Malmö University, and Provincie South-Holland.

The inclusive prosperity map uses an analysis of tens of thousands of municipal council motions – the formal proposals made by council members for the council to consider. Using artificial intelligence and topic modelling, the researchers will be able to discover which topics are most important in each district, such as affordable housing, urban poverty, sustainability and traffic safety. The research will continue until the end of June 2026 and the resulting dataset will be open access. The researchers’ intention is to create an open, thematic map of inclusive prosperity across the Netherlands, and the data will underpin a ‘vote compass’ (stemwijzer) for the next local elections in the Netherlands which take place in March 2026.

Principal investigator Dr. Kees Krul researches inclusive prosperity in RSM’s Department of Business-Society Management. His team for this project comprises:

Dr Daan Schraven, Associate Professor of New Economics in the Built Environment at TU Delft
Dr Pradeep Murukannaiah, Assistant Professor in Interactive Intelligence at TU Delft
Dr Magnus Andersson, Associate Professor of Economic Geography at Malmö University
Prof. Martin de Jong, Professor of Dynamics of Inclusive Prosperity at RSM
Marcel de Prieelle, Senior Advisor at Provincie Zuid-Holland

Funding comes from the Resilient Delta Initiative (RDI), one of five programmes of Convergence and an alliance between TU Delft, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Erasmus MC.

More information

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