Rotterdam’s Quick Scan

3. Rotterdam’s Quick Scan

Aligned with their Approach to Radicalisation, Extremism and Polarisation, the City of Rotterdam conducts Quick Scans that provide a general assessment of social tensions and polarising incidents and topics within the municipality. The Quick Scan has been conducted four times a year since 2017 and is also utilised in reaction to certain incidents at the local, national and international levels. It allows the local authority to ‘gauge the temperature’ within the city and enables the identification of tensions, polarising topics and sharpened conflicts at an early stage. The Quick Scan involves one-on-one interviews and meetings with key figures, stakeholders and representatives of all the communities and groups of the local society. This helps to quickly collect information about rising concerns and tensions in the city and thus enables a better comprehension and an adequate, targeted response. Other sources of information included in the Quick Scan are reports and information provided by youth services, which operate both online and on-site, as well as briefings and insights by police and other partners.

Required resources

The Quick Scan’s information and findings are provided by a range of key figures who represent and reflect the diversity of the city’s society. The municipality thus has committed to a long-term effort in establishing and maintaining a network of individuals who represent different communities, neighbourhoods, professions and demographics. These individuals contribute to a peaceful daily life in the city where people, regardless of their background or faith, can live together. The municipality maintains regular contact with them and holds training sessions as well as theme days to support them. The municipal guide for facilitating the network of key figures stresses the importance of investing in these efforts both at times of peace and tranquillity and at times of conflict. Alongside interviews with these individuals, other sources of information are also collected and analysed, including the monitoring and assessment of social media and other relevant online content.

Partnership

The municipality’s long-term engagement with its network of key figures is the cornerstone of the Quick Scan methodology. In addition to this, partnerships with police and other municipal services help to detect and assess information on rising tensions and polarisation.

Findings

Key individuals often quickly pick up signs of polarising tensions because they can easily identify what is going on in a given community because people trust them. The findings can be differentiated into ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ signals: soft signals refer to sentiments or rising concerns, hard signals to events or incidents. The Quick Scan findings are combined with other sources of information, such as the Rotterdam threat assessment that monitors trends of radicalisation.

The Quick Scan is a cornerstone of Rotterdam’s approach to responding to rising polarisation and to determining a comprehensive strategy to foster dialogue and social cohesion. Rotterdam attempts to enable