1. The FinEst Centre has effectively transformed into more autonomous structure as opposed to a partnership model that it was during initial set up
2. Collaborative Research activities:
• Over 300 research papers published in the field of smart city
• The FinEst Centre is funded by 20+ grants, mainly international.
• Affiliation Model with 40+ researchers from TalTech and Aalto
• The interdisciplinary TalTech-Aalto smart city PhD school
3. Piloting Programme
Six smart city solutions have been developed and piloted in the Estonian cities:
• The pilot tested an open-source Mobility as a Service platform (MaaS XT) connected to autonomous shuttle service in Rae parish and in Port of Tallinn. At the same time autonomous shuttles were collecting massive data with its high-end sensors and to make it available for advanced public service developments. Now the autonomous vehicle safety toolkit is offered by the FinEst Centre for further cities.
• GreenTwins brings forward the importance of urban vegetation for the well-being of citizens, forecasts and visualizes the temporal and seasonal changes in urban vegetation, as well as involves citizens into designing urban green areas. GreenTwins software applications and services are taken over by Greentwin.ai spin-off company. The company offers tools entitled “Herbarium”, “Synchroniser” and “Mapper”, platforms “Virtual Green Planner” and “Spacetime”, and advisory.
• DigiAudit's solution enables a data-based and real-time overview of the energy use, energy cost, carbon footprint of energy use, and indoor climate parameters on the building level or portfolio of buildings. The solution is licenced to Thinnect OÜ and part of it provided as a service to the clients of R8 Technologies. DigiAudit solution offers real-time energy use and indoor climate overview of buildings to property owners, including: Energy labels and energy use analyses, Carbon footprint from energy use (input of the ESG report), Automatic indoor climate labels (internal climate classes), Monitoring actual energy savings when implementing energy-saving measures.
• The pilot project demonstrates how power system digitalisation through open and modular software and the integration of energy storage can enable increased use of locally available energy resources. Now the spin-off company is in preparation and the team is working of automatization of the energy management platform.
• Well-being Score pilot bridges the gap between urban planners and citizens with a diagnostic tool for measuring citizens’ well-being. This is an innovative method to integrate quantitative physiological and spatial, but also subjective psychological indicators for assessing environments objectively. Now the urban well-being diagnostics service is offered by the FinEst Centre for further cities.
• Software developed in RESTO (Renovation Strategy Tool) pilot aims to support the city planners in preparation of renovation strategies of city districts as a whole – to define the priority buildings, assess the investment volumes, saved energy and reduced carbon footprint of buildings. The software is ready and the service is offered by the FinEst Centre for further cities. We are also actively looking for a commercialisation partner for the tool for wider user groups.
The Smart City Challenge Round 3 is taking place in Sept 23 – Sept 24, 2024 and the new pilot projects will start from Nov 2024 that will be piloted both in Estonian and international cities. The Smart City Challenge Round 4 will take place in May 24 – May 25, 2024.
