The City of Helsinki’s innovation company, Forum Virium Helsinki, will test three innovative monitoring solutions in the spring to collect data on the utilization rates of the city’s loading zones. The pilot aims to determine whether a more flexible use of street space can enable smoother deliveries and reduce emissions caused by searching for loading spots.
Forum Virium Helsinki is conducting a loading zone monitoring pilot in Helsinki as part of the EU-funded DISCO project. Four companies are participating in the pilot: Ramboll Finland – in collaboration with Delicode, Technolution AB, and Flow Analytics by AGC. Flow Analytics will use LIDAR, or light detection and ranging technology, for monitoring, while the other companies will use camera technology. The pilot will run until April 30, 2025.
The goal of the experiment is to test whether flexible use of street space can lead to smoother transportation and reduce congestion and emissions caused by drivers searching for loading zones. Overall, the information gathered in the pilot will support the city in developing loading zones.
“The primary goal of the pilot is to gather information on the utilization rates of existing loading zones in the city center and to evaluate the functionality of battery-powered monitoring devices in a real urban environment,” says Matias Oikari, Project Manager at Forum Virium Helsinki.
Smart technology-utilizing monitoring devices will be installed in several loading spaces in the city center: four locations on Annankatu, Vuorikatu, Fredrikinkatu, and Hämeentie. During the pilot, some of the monitoring devices will be moved between different loading spaces to test the portability of the solutions in practice.
The devices will collect information on how busy the spaces are and what types of vehicles use them. The information will only be used to determine the utilization rate of loading zones and is fully compliant with data protection regulations. The collected information will be used in the planning of the City of Helsinki’s loading space development program.
“The data collected in the trial will not be used for parking enforcement. The camera image is not stored or forwarded, but the collected data is processed and anonymized automatically immediately upon collection on the devices,” Oikari clarifies.
As part of the pilot, the possibility of providing real-time loading zone usage information directly to logistics drivers will also be tested. This will be implemented through Tietorahti‘s Maps4Cargo application, which is used daily by over 20,000 professional drivers in Finland. The real-time information on the availability of loading zones, produced by the monitoring devices, will be visualized in the map service, allowing drivers to monitor the availability of equipped spaces and use this information for route planning.
The overall goal of the Horizon Europe-funded DISCO project is to develop and test new solutions for the more flexible use of underutilized urban space to address the challenges posed by urban logistics. The most significant of these challenges are emissions from distribution activities and the limited availability of space typical in urban environments.
Additional information
Matias Oikari
Project Manager
+358 40 664 8877
matias.oikari@forumvirium.fi
