The past year has seen successes in areas such as robotic vehicles, traffic data, drones and the carbon footprint of restaurants.

The urban digital twin is a model of a living Helsinki that facilitates planning, development and maintenance. We listed four ways in which the digital twin is transforming Helsinki.

In October 2021, The Climate Meal campaign was launched amongst restaurants in the Helsinki region, and its aim was to involve restaurants and their customers in climate work. Now, restaurants can continue using the Climate Meal label also after the campaign.

Data predicts residents’ needs, increases productivity and makes cities green and attractive. The City of Helsinki aims to be the best in the world when it comes to utilising urban data.

The “Hack the Urban Circular Economy: Making Waste to Talk Digi” hackathon challenges teams to find innovative ways to enhance the circular economy in urban areas by finding digital solutions that address solid waste management. Challenge Webinar takes place on 12 January, and the Hackathon webinar dates are 27-29 January, 2022.

The Circular Green Blocks project introduces new sharing and circular economy solutions to the city blocks and housing companies in the Helsinki region.

In Helsinki, local citizens got to experiment with the planning of green areas with Green Kalasatama mobile application. The app is one of the new digital tools created to support the planning of green infrastructure.

Two agile pilots will provide new information of urban plant life in Sompasaari while also engaging residents to take interest in the natural environment and its effects.

The Smart City Exchange Forum, held on the 27th January 2022, is the annual event of FinEst Centre created with an intent to offer a platform for knowledge transfer and discussions about practical as well as more theoretical issues related to smart city research and practice. Also to offer visibility to the up- and coming researchers in the Smart City field.

Smart Kalasatama has been developing smart city solutions since the beginning of Kalasatama district's construction in 2013. Now, they share the results and the learnings!

Starting from November, an electric robot will be operating in Jätkäsaari, Helsinki, providing an easy way for residents to pick up their packages delivered by DB Schenker.

What does a business ecosystem with moving platforms transporting service robots around town to perform circular economy tasks look like? The ‘AutoMod – Autonomiset modulaariratkaisut’ (autonomous modular solutions) project (AutoMod) will examine how this transportation platform would operate and what type of robots would work on the platform.  

A new EU project Artificial Intelligence threat Reporting and Incident response System IRIS has come to protect ICT systems providing collaborative-first approach and state-of-the-art technology. The project consists of 19 partners from 12 European countries.

The Climate Meal campaign brings climate-friendly meals to restaurant menus from 25 October to 28 November 2021. In the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, about 50 restaurants have signed up for the pilot project, each of which will offer at least one climate meal option daily.

The Helsinki Innovation Districts project introduces a set of methods and models that are useful in living lab work in a city district. Browse through the Tools for Urban Innovators to learn about Helsinki’s best practises for smart city development.

Video games serve as a good accelerator for developers of digital landscaping tools. The technologies used in video games allow planners to see what the city will look like in the future.

The EU-funded IoT-NGIN introduces novel research and innovation concepts, to establish itself as the “IoT Engine” that will fuel the Next Generation of IoT as a part of the European Next Generation Internet.

Forum Virium Helsinki solves the development needs of drone transport together with its partners. One major area that needs to be tackled is agreeing upon the shared use of the airspace in rapidly changing situations and finding the best purposes of use for drones.

B.Green project launches an open call seeking innovative solutions to map urban plant life. This agile piloting challenge is a step towards collecting comprehensive natural environment data to support the development of more ecologically sustainable urban planning at the City of Helsinki.

The Climate Meal label helps customers to identify meals from the menu that have a smaller-than-average carbon footprint.

The aim of the pilot is to improve the accessibility of Aurinkolahti area and drive at higher average speeds than in previous pilots.