Housing and the social domain
Population ageing is not just a demographic trend; it has a clear spatial pattern. It concentrates in particular neighbourhoods, streets and building types, and so does the gap between the homes people live in and the care and support they need or may need in the future.
Knowing averages is not enough: meaningful decisions require understanding where needs are concentrated, in which neighbourhoods, streets, blocks and types of housing.
We bring more than 25 years of experience in housing, care and the social domain, combining insights from applied gerontology with expertise in spatial analysis and modelling. We support municipalities, care providers and housing corporations with questions about suitable housing, the location and accessibility of services, and the planning of the living environment. Privacy is an important consideration for us and therefore a key design principle: our models transform personal information into spatial insights, enabling societal use while protecting individuals.
WoonZorgwijzer
The WoonZorgwijzer is our most widely used and adopted application in the social domain. It has been adopted by municipalities, housing corporations, healthcare providers, and many other organisations.
The WoonZorgwijzer provides detailed spatial estimates of the prevalence of health conditions and the functional limitations associated with them. Health conditions support strategic housing and care policy, while functional limitations help organisations identify where specific accessibility or support measures are likely to be needed. Together, they connect population health with the practical implications for housing and care.
The WoonZorgwijzer estimates the prevalence of health conditions from demographic and household characteristics. It does not use information about the health conditions or functional limitations of identifiable individuals. The resulting spatial patterns provide relevant insights for developing housing and care policies and programmes at different levels.
The tool is developed and maintained through collaboration between several organisations. Stichting In Fact develops the models that estimate the prevalence of health conditions and functional limitations mainly based on CBS microdata and makes these estimates available as datasets at an enhanced postcode level. Our role is in the geographic modelling: transforming these estimates into spatial representations and presenting them through interactive maps. BaasGeo develops the viewer together with us. A broader partnership, including Platform31, the Ministry of the Interior, several provinces and municipalities, housing corporations and RIGO, contributed domain expertise, policy insights, and practical knowledge to shape the instrument.
See web mapping for the live applications.
Other work
- KansenVerkenner, used by the municipality of The Hague since 2006 to analyse and visualise target groups, suitable housing and services at local and regional scale. Nearly twenty years of continuous use is its own kind of evidence.
- Demographic projections at fine scale, for example the development of the population over 65 per neighbourhood, used to test whether the existing housing stock and the distribution of services will still fit the residents of the future.
- Accessibility of facilities, computed over the real network rather than as the crow flies, because a five-minute walk and a five-minute walk around a canal are different things. See networks and accessibility.
The data underneath
Much of this work rests on carefully processed national registers: addresses and buildings (BAG), topography (BRT and BGT), elevation (AHN), cadastral data and property valuations. Making those usable is a substantial part of the job, and we publish the tooling: see our BAG tools and Pand Hoogte Nederland, which derives a height for every building in the country from the national elevation rasters.