Poverty has a negative impact on a society in a number of ways: reduced educational opportunities for young people, social exclusion, poorer quality of life, higher health costs and lower life expectancy are just some of the direct social consequences. The North Rhine-Westphalia state government has therefore made it its mission to combat the consequences of poverty in a targeted manner and to create the conditions for preventing poverty and exclusion as far as possible in the first place. In order to support this financially, the State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia has provided the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MAGS NRW) with additional funds for 2025 to implement “measures to combat poverty and promote social cohesion”.

Municipal social planning plays a crucial role in preventing and combating the consequences of poverty. Within a municipality, integrated and strategic social planning aims to create equivalent local living conditions in the individual districts and neighborhoods with the participation of different social actors and to ensure opportunities for participation for all citizens. The basis for this is small-scale knowledge of the different conditions within a municipality. By analyzing selected social statistical and qualitative data, different challenges in different social areas can be identified. Since certain characteristics are spatially concentrated and interdependent, an interdisciplinary view of the local conditions is required. Social, educational, labor market, economic, environmental, health, and urban development data must be considered together on a small scale.

With a central technical solution, people’s living situations can be analyzed in a coherent manner and the results are applicable to various planning processes across different offices and departments, as well as for the development of target groups and needs-oriented offers and measures. The web-based open source software KomMonitor offers such a possibility by providing tools for integrated GIS-based, spatio-temporal monitoring of geodata and statistics. An essential part of KomMonitor are interactive tools for collaborative, small-scale analysis and visualization of geodata and time series-based indicators. KomMonitor can be used to comprehensively analyze living situations and conditions within a community on a small scale to identify problem areas and the needs of residents. A separate funding module of the MAGS NRW call for proposals addresses the potential of KomMonitor to support local social planning in the context of poverty prevention and combating the consequences of poverty. Districts, independent cities and towns and municipalities belonging to districts in North Rhine-Westphalia can receive financial support for the introduction and development of KomMonitor.

KomMonitor is currently jointly managed by Bochum University of Applied Sciences and 52°North and is continuously being developed to meet the needs of municipal professionals. Numerous municipalities already successfully use KomMonitor for their social and urban planning. Together with the regional company G.I.B. NRW and the Bochum University of Applied Sciences, 52°North is a reliable partner who intensively supports the implementation process from the installation of the software components to the integration of heterogeneous geodata and statistical data sets to user support and training in the use of KomMonitor.