About Brandhaardjes
Brandhaardjes (“little hotspots”) keeps track of what is brewing in the Netherlands: protests, riots, blockades, occupations, strikes with street actions, vigils and commemorations, and visits by prominent foreign figures that often lead to protests or extra security. Everything is shown on a map, on a timeline and in RSS feeds.
Where does the data come from?
- Protest agendas: announced actions from watkanikdoen.nl and the agenda of The Rights Forum.
- News: the RSS feeds of national media (NOS, NU.nl, RTL Nieuws, AD, de Volkskrant, Trouw, NRC, Het Parool), regional broadcasters and the English-language DutchNews.nl and NL Times.
- Official notices: emergency orders and security risk areas that municipalities publish in the Gemeenteblad.
- Searches: Google Alerts and Brave Search as an extra safety net.
Every half hour a program collects new reports. News items that mention keywords such as demonstration, riots or state visit are read by a language model (Claude). It decides whether the item is about a specific event in the Netherlands, and if so: what, where and when. It also writes a short, neutral summary in Dutch and English. Places are put on the map with the PDOK Locatieserver of the Dutch Kadaster. Several reports about the same event are merged.
Good to know
- Everything is automated and may contain mistakes: a wrong place, date or type. Always check the source; every event links to the reports it is based on.
- Brandhaardjes does not copy articles, only its own summary and a link.
- Names of private individuals are not mentioned.
- Brandhaardjes takes no sides. A listing is not a call to go anywhere, nor a judgement of an action.
Something wrong, or want an event removed? Open an issue on GitHub.
Reusing the data
All events are available as JSON at /data/events.json, and there are RSS feeds for everything, per type, per province and per place. See also How to use Brandhaardjes.
The map is the BRT-Achtergrondkaart of the Kadaster. The site is built with Hugo, Pico CSS and Leaflet.