71 ideas were received for the open idea competition for the Smart City in 2020, the four best of which were selected and are implemented by the FinEst Center together with the cities where the solutions will be piloted. These ideas, which were initially excluded from the first round, were taken up again in 2021. The ideas were developed, partners were sought and finally the following two pilots were selected: Renovation Strategy Support and Urban Planning Welfare Score to create a better living environment. The pilots will carry out the period from January 2022 to June 2023. The pilot program is funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the Estonian Ministry of Research and Education.

Renovation Strategy Tool

Renovation Strategy Tool (RESTO) pilot aims to develop an innovative digital platform for municipal decision-makers that would allow them to optimize required investments into their building stock. The Tool will combine Pilot is carried out together with Võru city government in their town centre. RESTO would allow to evaluate the impact of alternatives in connection to different aspects such as technology, building and infrastructure design, urban  planning, and  business  models. Furthermore, utilising the digital twin data from the Building Registry and other public databases makes it possible  to  identify  optimal  configurations  that  allow to  account predefined limitations like availability of funds, energy performance ambition, environmental goals etc. In other words, RESTO would  allow  municipalities  to define, generate, simulate and quantitatively analyse renovation scenarios adapted to specific districts and buildings in order to make sensible investment decisions.

The pilot project is lead by Targo Kalamees and Einari Kisel.

Urban Planning Well-being Score for Good Quality Living Environment 

The pilot project aims to bridge the gap between urban planners and urban residents developing a well-being score. This score is an innovative method and tool integrating quantitative physiological and subjective psychological indicators for assessing environments that are not only safe and convenient, but also interesting or pleasant or vice versa to define environments that are unsafe, stressful, overstimulating, or unattractive.

The result is a visualization of well-being score (WBS) and related parameters as map layers including guidelines for interpretation and use in city planning workflow. The WBS can also be used as an input for solving climate challenges in the city planning. Increased well-being in the city, e.g. better human-environment relations, in turn, creates an overall spill-over effect contributing to secure and mentally, physically, socially, economically healthier city. Narva is the project pilot partner city where the WBS will serve as an additional input for making decisions about the improvements in their living districts to find new options for keeping and attracting citizens and investments.

The pilot project team will involve also other cities as the goal is to develop and validate a new service for the FinEst Centre for Smart Cities relevant for many cities in Europe.

The pilot project is lead by Ivo Fridolin and Külle Tärnov.

During 2022, the FinEst Centre for Smart Cities together with the Ministry of Education and Research will prepare the decree of the Smart City Center of Excellence pilot program for the years 2023-2027. As part of this, the  FinEst Centre for Smart Cities will implement at least 6 more pilot projects

Stay tuned with the developments HERE.