Co-organised with Google, the two-part webinar “How (free) Google tools can help our cities and regions” training targeted members’ technical staff across different departments, transport, traffic management, planning, urban design, GIS, road safety, and climate.

The goal was simple: to show how commonly used Google tools, such as Google Maps and Waze, can do more than guide individuals through cities and regions. They can also help public authorities inform citizens, manage transport networks, contribute data, and access real-time insights. These technical sessions followed a high-level tutorial for political leaders and advisors held on 20 June, ensuring a shared understanding across city teams. The report from that tutorial can be accessed here. 

Using Google tools to share data and inform your users

The first session focused on how cities and regions can contribute data to Google platforms in order to enhance digital services for their citizens and visitors. Google’s team introduced the Geo for Cities suite, which encompasses tools to manage information for driving, public transport, cycling, walking, and points of interest. These platforms allow public authorities to add, correct, and update content on Google Maps and Waze, ensuring accuracy and improving the visibility of services.

Participants learned how features such as fuel-efficient routing, low-emission zone alerts, and real-time speed limits in Google Maps are powered by data that can, and should, come from cities themselves. In the case of walking and cycling, improvements are being rolled out in some POLIS partners, including Brussels, Budapest and Paris, with new data pipelines allowing Google to update cycling infrastructure and pedestrian zones more regularly.

A particularly impactful function is the integration of public transport information. Authorities can upload static schedules, real-time updates, and alerts through the Google Transit and Transit Partners tool, making services visible and trustworthy, especially for tourists or users who don’t rely on local apps. Google can also ingest data via National Access Points.

For points of interest, public institutions and SMEs can manage their own listings via Google Business Profile. Authorities are encouraged to claim official buildings and ensure citizens find up-to-date opening hours and services. This also extends to markets, cultural venues, and temporary facilities.

The session introduced two key contribution platforms:

• Google Maps Content Partners, where authorities can upload datasets (such as road names, addresses, bike lanes, or park boundaries) through URLs, recurring uploads or direct editing. A step-by-step walkthrough showed how authorities can set up accounts, format data, and assign team members to maintain contributions.
• Waze for Cities, which allows authorities to share real-time alerts on accidents, construction, events or hazards. Waze can display this information immediately to users and, critically, also synchronises certain data back into Google Maps. Closures can be added manually or via live feeds, which are strongly encouraged for scalability.

Google’s team emphasised that submitting reliable, structured data enables powerful features like multimodal routing, sustainable travel suggestions, and enhanced accessibility. Several participants asked about walking speed calibration, integration with shared mobility, and congestion data visualisation, leading to clarifications on how traffic layers are generated through anonymised, opt-in Android location data.

The ability to directly edit roads and closures, manage map content, and contribute alerts makes it easier for local governments to ensure the digital representation of their cities matches the reality on the ground.

Accessing insights, improving mobility intelligence

The second webinar shifted from data contribution to data use. It highlighted how Google’s tools, especially 'Waze for Cities' and their 'Environmental Insights Explorer', can help local authorities make informed decisions in areas such as traffic management, emissions monitoring, and road safety.

Waze for Cities enables two-way data exchange between local authorities and the platform, helping cities manage traffic and gain visibility into road user behaviour. Participants were introduced to the Partner Hub, the dedicated online dashboard available to all Waze for Cities partners.

In addition to allowing cities to publish data — such as road closures, construction zones, incidents, or special events — the Partner Hub provides access to valuable traffic insights, including:

• Live traffic dashboards, showing congestion levels and traffic flow in near-real time;
• Heat maps, which visualise where traffic slowdowns, jams, or disruptions occur most frequently;
• Historical data, allowing comparisons across time or between zones;
• Export functions, so that cities can use Waze data in their own GIS tools or reporting systems.

Authorities can access both visual summaries and raw data for deeper analysis. This makes the Partner Hub a useful resource not only for day-to-day operations (e.g. event planning, emergency response), but also for strategic planning and mobility performance evaluation.

Smaller municipalities without automated feeds can still use the manual input tool to mark closures and disruptions. Meanwhile, cities with more advanced technical capabilities are encouraged to establish live data feeds, which enable seamless, real-time updates between the local authority and the Waze ecosystem (including Google Maps).

The second part of the webinar was dedicated to the Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE), a free online platform developed by Google to support cities in understanding their emissions footprint, with a strong focus on transport and buildings.

Using satellite imagery, global maps, and anonymised mobility data, EIE provides estimates on:

• Transport emissions, calculated at city and sub-city levels;
• Modal split between car, public transport, walking, and cycling;
• Avoided emissions thanks to active modes (e.g. walking and cycling);
• Solar rooftop potential, estimating the energy that could be generated by solar panels across the city.

These data points are particularly useful for cities preparing or updating Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs), climate strategies, or funding applications that require robust baselines. The fact that the platform is publicly accessible and offers exportable datasets makes it especially valuable for local authorities with limited in-house modelling capacity.

Participants appreciated the ability to use EIE as both a diagnostic and communication tool — for example, showing the carbon impact of different policy scenarios, or visualising the benefits of a shift toward cycling infrastructure. The data is available in over 40,000 cities worldwide.

Looking ahead

POLIS will continue working with Google to provide follow-up materials, support and potential future sessions. In the meantime, local and regional members are encouraged to explore the platforms, register as partners, and start identifying where these tools can add value in their daily work.

To view the full recording of the tutorial, please click here and here.