1001 Smart Cities
🇨🇭 Zürich

ewz.LoRaWAN — Zurich's Municipal IoT Network

🤖 AI-generated summary · ◆ 7 sourced claims · 🔎 Last verified

This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.

7 sourced claims on this page, none individually verified yet — turn on “Sources in the text” to see each one.

How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means · The full record behind this page

The city utility and IT department have run a citywide LoRaWAN since 2018, keeping the data in Zurich's own data centre. What actually runs on it: a 185-space parking pilot and 16 chair sensors.

Outcome🔄 Ongoing
Evidence🏛️ Officialgrades the sourcing — this entry states no impact figure
what does this mean?The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →
Run byewz (Elektrizitätswerk der Stadt Zürich) with Organisation und Informatik Stadt Zürich (OIZ)
Scale🏙️ City-wide

Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ 8 more in Zürich · 📡 Sensors & IoT guide · 📡 Data & IoT projects

Zurich's city-owned utility ewz and the municipal IT department OIZ have run a citywide LoRaWAN, routing sensor data into the city's own data centre and offering it to every department. Two applications are documented: a 185-space parking pilot at the Hallenstadion, and 16 chair sensors that measured how two public squares are used.

Live 📅 since 2018
📡 Data & IoTSensors & IoTLoRaWANConnectivity & 5GSmart parkingPublic space

Sources

↗ Stadt Zürich — Internet der Dinge: OIZ und ewz bieten Service anPublished 26 May 2020City authority: ewz and OIZ built the LoRaWAN; ewz moves data from the gateways into the OIZ data centre; pilot projects began in spring 2018.
↗ ewz — LoRaWAN, IoT-Netz für ZürichOperator: dates regular operation of ewz.LoRaWAN to 2020 and describes citywide gateway coverage.
↗ Stadt Zürich — Sensoren-Tests auf zwei Zürcher Plätzen (8 Aug 2022)Tiefbauamt and ETH Zurich fitted chairs on Münsterhof and Vulkanplatz with sensors for occupancy, temperature, humidity and noise, transmitted over ewz's LoRaWAN.
↗ inside-it.ch — Smarte Stühle in Zürich haben sich bewährt (5 Apr 2023)Swiss IT trade press: 16 sensors, eight per square, reliable transmission.
↗ powernewz (ewz) — «Zürich soll die smarteste City der Welt werden»Published September 2019 · updated 3 February 2024ewz's own magazine: 185 sensor-equipped parking spaces at the Hallenstadion fed into the city parking guidance system, as a pilot.
Show 1 more sourcesShow fewer
↗ akenza — ewz opens ewz.LoRaWAN as Connectivity as a Service (15 Jun 2022)Partner announcement: third parties in Zurich can attach their own sensors to the municipal network.

📅 How old is the evidence?

Two clocks, kept apart: when this entry’s sources were published, and what has happened to its record in the atlas. Documented span: since 2018. 4 of 6 sources carry a publication date, from September 2019 to 8 August 2022.

When the sources were published

  1. ewz — Elektrizitätswerk der Stadt Zürich · utilitypowernewz (ewz) — «Zürich soll die smarteste City der Welt werden» · updated 3 February 2024
  2. Stadt Zürich · city governmentStadt Zürich — Internet der Dinge: OIZ und ewz bieten Service an
  3. akenza · vendorakenza — ewz opens ewz.LoRaWAN as Connectivity as a Service (15 Jun 2022)
  4. Stadt Zürich · city governmentStadt Zürich — Sensoren-Tests auf zwei Zürcher Plätzen (8 Aug 2022)

Every source, with links ↑

What happened to this record

  1. Sources last read
  2. Entered the record

Every revision, permanent →

Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 7 claims with their sources · the forensic record

Evidence Passport · public beta 7 addressable claims, 6 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The passport is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.

Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 7

The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.

Claim 1 clm-52bf52d931422d0b descriptive
Zurich's city-owned utility ewz and the municipal IT department OIZ
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The city's own article names both bodies and divides the work between them: the LoRaWAN was "das von ewz und OIZ aufgebaute LoRaWAN" (the LoRaWAN built by ewz and OIZ), with ewz responsible for moving sensor data through the gateways and for general network operation, and OIZ forwarding the data to the specialist applications. Akenza's announcement describes the same pairing: "the utility provider ewz, in cooperation with the city's IT organization OIZ has been operating the LoRaWAN infrastructure in the city of Zürich". ewz is the electricity utility owned by the City of Zurich, and OIZ is the city's own IT organisation.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Stadt Zürich — Internet der Dinge: OIZ und ewz bieten Service an
  2. akenza — ewz opens ewz.LoRaWAN as Connectivity as a Service (15 Jun 2022)
Claim 2 clm-ba91c04168921579 descriptive
have run a citywide LoRaWAN
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The operator's own page states that "ewz betreibt in Zürich ein flächendeckendes LoRa-Netz" (ewz operates a blanket LoRa network in Zurich) and advertises "Perfekte Abdeckung in der ganzen Stadt Zürich" (perfect coverage across the whole city of Zurich). Akenza's announcement says the network "offers excellent network coverage in the Zurich city area". The ewz page is a live sales page and still describes the network in the present tense.
Caveat
Coverage is described only by the operator and its platform partner, in the language of a product page. No listed source gives a gateway count, a coverage map or a measurement by anyone outside the network's own operator.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. ewz — LoRaWAN, IoT-Netz für Zürich
  2. akenza — ewz opens ewz.LoRaWAN as Connectivity as a Service (15 Jun 2022)
Claim 3 clm-33f1b89158cbe5e5 descriptive
routing sensor data into the city's own data centre
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The city article describes exactly this path: the LoRaWAN acts "als Netzwerk zwischen Sensoren und dem Rechenzentrum der Stadt Zürich" (as the network between the sensors and the City of Zurich's data centre), and "Dabei ist ewz für die Datenübertragung von Sensoren über die verschiedenen Antennen (Gateways) in das OIZ-Rechenzentrum und den allgemeinen Netzbetrieb zuständig" (ewz is responsible for transmitting sensor data through the various gateways into the OIZ data centre and for general network operation).
Caveat
The same article describes a second, separate strand of ewz sensor work whose analysis platform was deliberately built in a commercial cloud rather than the municipal data centre, on the grounds that comparable capacity in the city's own centre would have cost several times as much. Not every ewz sensor project therefore ends up in the city's data centre.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Stadt Zürich — Internet der Dinge: OIZ und ewz bieten Service an
Claim 4 clm-5829a9f0ae9b5de4 descriptive
offering it to every department
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The city article says the network "allen Dienstabteilungen der Stadt Zürich für die Übertragung von Messdaten zur Verfügung steht" (is available to all departments of the City of Zurich for transmitting measurement data), and that OIZ makes sure the components of the system work together and are available to the departments.
Caveat
What the city offers to every department is the network itself, as a way of transmitting their own measurements; the article does not say that data gathered by one department is shared with the others. OIZ is described as forwarding data to the specialist application that needs it.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Stadt Zürich — Internet der Dinge: OIZ und ewz bieten Service an
Claim 5 clm-5aa745143183169b quantitative
a 185-space parking pilot at the Hallenstadion
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
Marcus Cathomen of ewz is quoted describing the pilot: "185 Parkplätze beim Hallenstadion in Oerlikon mit Sensoren ausgerüstet und ins Parkleitsystem der Stadt Zürich integriert wurden" (185 parking spaces at the Hallenstadion in Oerlikon were fitted with sensors and integrated into the City of Zurich's parking guidance system), carried out with the traffic department and OIZ. He adds that "Aus diesem Pilotprojekt haben wir viele Erkenntnisse für weitere Zürcher IoT-Projekte gewonnen" (we gained many insights from this pilot project for further Zurich IoT projects).
Caveat
The account is ewz's own, published in the magazine ewz produces, and the article states that it first appeared in September 2019. The utility speaks of the pilot in the past tense, as a finished exercise it drew lessons from; no listed source says whether the sensors are still in the ground or whether the guidance system still uses them.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. powernewz (ewz) — «Zürich soll die smarteste City der Welt werden»
Claim 6 clm-74a74345e01212eb quantitative
16 chair sensors
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The count rests on this trade-press report alone, and the article could not be opened for checking: the publisher serves it behind an automated interactive challenge, so no wording from it could be quoted and no locator could be recorded. The city's own announcement of the test, which is also listed here, describes the sensors and the two squares but gives no number at all.
Caveat
No source that can be read gives a number. The one that is said to carry it is a trade-press article rather than the city or the utility, and the figure could not be checked against its wording.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. inside-it.ch — Smarte Stühle in Zürich haben sich bewährt (5 Apr 2023)
Claim 7 clm-d2d204f064d288bf descriptive
that measured how two public squares are used
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The city's announcement says the civil engineering office, together with ewz and ETH Zurich, tested newly developed sensors on the Münsterhof and the Vulkanplatz until the end of September 2022: "testet das Tiefbauamt zusammen mit ewz und der ETH Zürich auf dem Münsterhof und dem Vulkanplatz bis Ende September 2022 neu entwickelte Sensoren". It states what they record — "Die Sensoren messen die Belegung und Verweildauer auf den Stühlen" (the sensors measure occupancy and dwell time on the chairs), along with the chairs' location, temperature, humidity and noise level — and that "ewz stellt für die drahtlose Datenübertragung sein «LoRaWAN» bereit" (ewz provides its LoRaWAN for the wireless transmission).
Caveat
What the sensors measured was the use of the chairs — where they stood and how long people sat on them — rather than the use of the squares as a whole. The city describes a test running to the end of September 2022, undertaken to see whether such sensors could later serve the planning of public space.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Stadt Zürich — Sensoren-Tests auf zwei Zürcher Plätzen (8 Aug 2022)
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders

This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.

unreviewed Revision 2026-08-22-evidence-baseline effective 2026-07-29 · created 2026-08-22

Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.

sha256:185314f1f5dc75984508bb4f5b3f0dfcf30e0b8b631263a81ceda2a5f0d21757
Revision history → Permanent version link → Machine-readable record → Evidence Constitution →
7
of 7 claims mapped
6
source dossiers
4
publication dates recorded
0
archives linked
0
exact locators
0
content captures hashed

Governance facts carried by the record

Operator
ewz (Elektrizitätswerk der Stadt Zürich) with Organisation und Informatik Stadt Zürich (OIZ)
Actor types
utility, city-government
Funding model
utility
Funding description
Not recorded
Cost
Not recorded
Ownership
Not recorded
Decision rights
Not recorded
Exit conditions
Not recorded

6 source dossiers

Stadt Zürich — Internet der Dinge: OIZ und ewz bieten Service an stadt-zuerich.ch · 3 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-c7f6977ba35904a4
Publisher
Name not classified · stadt-zuerich.ch
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2020-05-26
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-29
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

City authority: ewz and OIZ built the LoRaWAN; ewz moves data from the gateways into the OIZ data centre; pilot projects began in spring 2018.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
ewz — LoRaWAN, IoT-Netz für Zürich ewz.ch · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-4608e6496490851d
Publisher
Name not classified · ewz.ch
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
Not recorded
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-29
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Operator: dates regular operation of ewz.LoRaWAN to 2020 and describes citywide gateway coverage.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Stadt Zürich — Sensoren-Tests auf zwei Zürcher Plätzen (8 Aug 2022) stadt-zuerich.ch · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-128f4197949ba4ff
Publisher
Name not classified · stadt-zuerich.ch
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2022-08-08
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-29
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Tiefbauamt and ETH Zurich fitted chairs on Münsterhof and Vulkanplatz with sensors for occupancy, temperature, humidity and noise, transmitted over ewz's LoRaWAN.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
inside-it.ch — Smarte Stühle in Zürich haben sich bewährt (5 Apr 2023) inside-it.ch · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-4d02af0bb1e5999b
Publisher
Name not classified · inside-it.ch
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2023-04-05
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-29
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Swiss IT trade press: 16 sensors, eight per square, reliable transmission.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
powernewz (ewz) — «Zürich soll die smarteste City der Welt werden» powernewz.ch · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-67b6f7e009e75eb8
Publisher
Name not classified · powernewz.ch
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
Not recorded
Updated
2024-02-03
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-29
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

ewz's own magazine: 185 sensor-equipped parking spaces at the Hallenstadion fed into the city parking guidance system, as a pilot.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
akenza — ewz opens ewz.LoRaWAN as Connectivity as a Service (15 Jun 2022) akenza.io · 2 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-78b9161dd87b3d08
Publisher
Name not classified · akenza.io
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2022-06-15
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-29
Dossier created
2026-08-22
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Partner announcement: third parties in Zurich can attach their own sensors to the municipal network.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Known limits of this passport
  • Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
  • Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
  • A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
  • The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.

Continue exploring

Compare this project

🇦🇹 Wiener Netze / Wien Energie LoRaWAN Sensor Network · Vienna Same architecture: a municipal utility (ewz, Wiener Netze) builds a citywide LoRaWAN and opens it to city departments and third parties. 🇨🇭 ewz Smart Meter Rollout on the City Fibre Network · Zürich Both ride ewz's own network infrastructure: LoRaWAN sensors and smart-meter telemetry share the utility's city-owned fibre backbone. 🇲🇾 Smart City LoRaWAN Innovation Zone · Cyberjaya Same architecture, different anchor use: Cyberjaya's LoRaWAN launched alongside Malaysia's first drone zone; Zurich's began with parking.

Explore the wider context

📟 A Reading Is Not a Decision📖 LoRaWAN📖 Urban sensor network📖 15-minute city
📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “ewz.LoRaWAN — Zurich's Municipal IoT Network” — Zürich, Switzerland. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/zurich-iot-sensor-network/ (last verified 2026-07-29). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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