Tampere wins top award at Barcelona Smart City Expo World Congress 2023

The Finnish city of Tampere came top in the enabling technologies category for its efforts to go green and smart at the SCEWC this year.

The city, along with its partners including Wapice Oy, has developed and applied smart solutions to improve residents' lives and to shift towards carbon neutrality. These measures include a smart data centre, an IoT platform and security solutions for businesses.

The Mayor of Tampere, Kalervo Kummola, stated: "In a competition of this high calibre, even reaching the finals is noteworthy, and winning is truly a remarkable accomplishment. This recognition reaffirms that our systematic development of a smart city is yielding results and supporting the city in achieving its goals."

An example of a smart measure developed in Tampere is its IoT platform.

"Our IoT platform serves as a means to gather city data from various domains, such as traffic, urban areas, and street lighting. This anonymized data is then utilized to optimize services for citizens, reduce costs for the municipality, and ultimately make Tampere a better city for everyone", Jari Kussisto from Wapice Oy software company explains

"Its unique feature lies in its ability to gather data from various sources and easily build a number of different applications. Additionally, due to its reliance on open APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), the collected data can be made accessible to a broader audience for other use cases.

Through the use of this platform in Tampere, we have engineered applications for traffic planning, to make the city center more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly, as well as for maintenance purposes, which allow for the monitoring and correct functioning of the street lighting network, while also ensuring the safety of all inhabitants. Additionally, we can forecast the flow of people within the city, which in turn allows us to predict when certain areas will be crowded. That information may then be used by local businesses, such as restaurants, for example, to plan their staff's schedule accordingly.

By leveraging the AI component of the platform, we can combine data in different ways, thereby offering valuable insights and information to both the city authorities and citizens".

Tampere is part of the EU-funded smart city STARDUST project where it has collaborated with other cities across Europe. This cross-fertilization of insights and experience has contributed to Tampere's success at SCEWC.

Photo credit: Diego Giuliani

Contacts

Coordinator: Florencio Manteca, CENER—CIEMAT FOUNDATION, fmanteca@cener.com

Communication Managers: Ilaria Orfino, ICONS, ilaria.orfino@icons.it; Mark Thompson, ICONS, communication@stardustproject.eu

Project website: Stardust (stardustproject.eu)
Twitter: @stardusth2020
LinkedIn: Stardust project
YouTube: Stardust H2020

Provided by iCube Programme