Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance

Project type: European Commission's Interreg BSR funded project, 2023-2025, 207 533 EUR

Principal investigator: Dr. Jaanus Müür

Short Abstract: Urban Air Mobility (UAM), its increasingly important role in cities and the tools needed to manage it, are at the core of the CITYAM project. Drones are a green and smart mobility form, but the potential, volume and sustainability of these automated vehicles in the lower airspace of our cities needs management and better planning. For this, a strategy and policies, preparation, greater awareness and more knowledge and tools are crucial. The 13-partner strong consortium with 6 ambitious cities, living lab partners, network organisations and renowned universities has started to develop, test and scale this. While industry works on overcoming technical challenges and the European Aviation Safety Agency pushes forward with regulations, societies in the BSR – cities and their citizens – should not idly stand by and wait until this new technology has taken permanently a larger place in our daily lives. Therefore, through close transnational cooperation, CITYAM is working to provide the ingredients and tools for a solid UAM strategy, to adapt city planning practices in relation to landing site and airspace management, and also to scale city-owned drone operations as part of a multimodal transport system. Increasing public officials’ capabilities, and measuring public acceptance are key to this work. Through CITYAM, the Baltic Sea region will strengthen its European frontrunner role in UAM and lead the way for local authorities to shape a responsible and sustainable use of the air in our cities.

See more HERE

Project type: European Commission's Horizon Europe funded project, 2025-2029, 222 750 EUR

Principal investigator: Prof. Veiko Lember

Short Abstract: The RADAR project (Renewing Administration through Democratic Anchorage Reforms) aims to enhance the democratic governance of public services and public administrations. To construct legitimacy for public administration, it will focus on democratic anchorage, new narratives and education.

Project type: Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications funded project, 2025-2026, 174 151 EUR

Principal investigator: Prof. Erkki Karo

Short Abstract: Although there is a clear need in Estonia to make economic policy more responsible and smarter, the call for projects highlights the challenge of a lack of unified understanding of what sustainability entails across different sectors in the long term. Most of the described pain points are also noted in strategic documents guiding Estonia’s sustainable economic development. Hence, the key problems are more evident at the policy implementation level, where public sector interventions have sometimes yielded opposite results, had minimal impact, or progressed too slowly.

The project aims to analyze and solve these problems through the following activities

First, to analyze and synthesize what opportunities does the green transition offer for Estonia, and what prerequisites are needed to realize them? We will validate some of these opportunities, create cross-sectoral links, and obtain a realistic picture of what the green transition entails in sectors most crucial for sustainability transition.

Second, clarifying the above and mapping the way forward will allow for a deeper investigation into necessary changes in policy measures: which public sector interventions should be increased, newly created, reduced, or discontinued.

Third, to achieve real change in businesses, we will collaborate with the Client to design novel interventions for the next period's economic policy.

We expect long-term results, as the project coincides with policy design for the 2027-2034 budget period, enabling the public sector to acquire skills that are more effective for solving today’s and future problems. The output will be policy recommendations (measure design and skills) implemented from 2027 onward.

Project type: European Commission's LIFE Programme funded project, 2023–2026, 185 613 EUR

Principal investigator: Dr. Chris Giotitsas

Short description: LIFE-COMET aims to perform a comprehensive and holistic assessment, experience exchange from best practices, as well as significant advocacy efforts in order to achieve a shift towards the desired transformation of the enabling frameworks. The main objective is to create community energy (CE) coalitions which will foster the collaboration of key stakeholders. They will engage in a series of actions with the aim of simplifying the procedures and creating better conditions through collective advocacy efforts, thus enabling and stimulating the citizens to participate in the CE projects. Activities will provide tailor-made solutions and concrete technical, legal and administrative support, while also developing shared tools to support the development of starting energy communities.

LIFE-COMET will: 

 -Form community energy coalitions by identifying, engaging and empowering relevant national CE stakeholders.

 -Explore local specificities to create a better understanding for CE-related engagement and then create favorable framework conditions and improved market conditions through coalitions’ advocacy, development of tools, methodologies and technical support for catalyzing new CE initiatives.

 -Build on top of and complement the existing networks, platforms and projects with an innovative and comprehensive approach to tackling the specificities of CE hurdles in Eastern EU. 

 -Replicate and disseminate the developed tools, methodologies, experiences and business models, thus scaling up the impact and further increasing the number of CE initiatives in this region.

More info on the project's website: https://lifecomet.rescoop.eu/

Project type: European Commission's H2020 funded project, duration 2022–2026, 288 713 EUR

Principal investigator: Prof. Tiina Randma-Liiv

Short description: The focus of European post-pandemic politics is on enhancing system capacities for ‘bouncing back’ from crisis to normalcy. These efforts draw on resilience research, which has become the dominant paradigm in crisis management. However, there are broad governance challenges that the resilience approach fails to consider. Centrally, how can European societies harness flexible adaptation and proactive innovation to deliver effective crisis responses in situations, where going back to the way things were is neither possible nor desirable? How can democratic institutions uphold core values such as democracy, the rule of law, and fundamental rights in the face of crisis-induced turbulence? To address these challenges, the ROBUST project aims to set in motion a paradigm shift from ‘resilience’ (‘bouncing back’) to ‘robustness’(‘building back better’) as the central principle of future crisis governance. The project breaks new ground by operationalizing the concept of robust crisis governance and investigating such responses empirically. The project combines historical and comparative analysis at EU, national and local levels together with a multi-dimensional dataset out of which we identify the configurations of factors that drive (or block) robustness in crisis governance. The project studies responses by EU institutions and eight European countries to recent crises (with emphasis on COVID-19) to understand general patterns in system-level crises response. At the same time, we also conduct in-depth studies of localized COVID-19 responses in 16 European localities to understand how EU, national and local crisis responses interact and are experienced by citizens. On this basis, the project delivers the elements of a new mindset and a paradigm change along with policy recommendations for enabling the robust crisis governance of the future.

Project type: Estonian Ministry of Education and Research funded project, duration 2024–2027, 1 216 300 EUR

Investigator from Nurkse Department: Prof. Anu Masso

Short description: UrbanSplash offers a comprehensive, real-time solution for monitoring and managing bathing water quality. The project will deploy advanced sensors and technologies for near-real-time detection of Fecal Indicator Bacteria (FIBs). The system integrates in-situ data from low-cost IoT sensors, meteorological data, and geospatial data at the catchment scale to provide accurate and timely water quality data and forecasts. The solution will be developed, piloted in Tartu and Dublin and prepared for commercialisation.

Project type: Estonian Research Foundation funded project, duration 2021–2025, 869 100 EUR

Investigator from Nurkse Department: Prof. Ringa Raudla

Short description: The overall goal of the project is to examine the opportunities and pitfalls involved in using experimental approaches for promoting institutional innovations in the domains of fiscal and financial policy. More specifically, the project focuses on the role of fiscal and financial bureaucrats (civil servants working in the finance ministries, financial regulatory authorities, tax offices, and the central banks) in Estonia, Latvia, and Finland in using experimental approaches for fostering institutional innovations. The project addresses the following research questions: What are the main expected benefits and challenges of using experimental approaches more extensively in the domains of fiscal and financial policy? How successful have been the previous or ongoing experiments in those policy areas? What kinds of administrative and policy capacities of fiscal and financial bureaucracies should be developed to employ experimental approaches for fostering institutional innovations?

Our research and innovation projects have been previously funded by the European Commission’s Framework Programmes (FP7 and H2020) and territorial cooperation programmes (Interreg) e.g.:

• BoostEuroTeQ: strengthening institutional transformations for responsible engineering education in Europe, 2021-2024 (PI Prof. Erkki Karo), see more HERE

• CENTRINNO: New Centralities in Industrial Areas as Engines for Innovation and Urban Transformation, 2020-2024 (PI Prof. Veiko Lember), see more https://centrinno.eu/about/

• SMOOTH: Educational commons and active social inclusion, 2021-2024 (PI Prof. Vasilis Kostakis), see more HERE

• ComPra: Blended Short-cycle Training Courses on ‘Commoning Practices’, 2020-2023 (PI Prof. Vasilis Kostakis), see more HERE

• COSMOLOCALISM: Design Global, Manufacture Local: Assessing the Practices, Innovation, and Sustainability Potential of an Emerging Mode of Production, 2019-2022 (PI Prof. Vasilis Kostakis), see more https://www.cosmolocalism.eu

• CATCHAIN: Catching-Up along the global value chain: business models, determinants and policy implications in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, 2018-2022 (PI Prof. Tarmo Kalvet), see more: https://www.catchain.eu

• BIO-ADDVAL: Analyses of the Economic Situation and Perspective of the Estonia´s Bioeconomy and its sectors, 2018-2021 (PI: Prof. Erkki Karo), see more:  https://taltech.ee/biomajandus

• CAP4CITY: Strengthening Governance Capacity for Smart Sustainable Cities, 2018-2021 (PI: Prof. Robert Krimmer)

• TROPICO: Transforming into Open, Innovative, and Collaborative Governments, 2017-2021 (PI: Prof. Tiina Randma-Liiv), see more: https://tropico-project.eu

• TOOP: The Once-Only Principle Project, 2017-2020 (PI: Prof. Robert Krimmer), see more: https://toop.eu

• Coordination instruments at the center of government: opportunities and limitations of temporary task forces, 2017-2020 (PI: Dr. Külli Sarapuu)

• Internet Voting as Additional Channel for Legally Binding Elections: Challenges to Voting Processes Re-engineering, 2017-2020 (PI: Prof. Robert Krimmer

• Sohjoa Baltic: Promoting the usage of urban public transportation including automated electric minibuses (robot buses) as part of the public transport chain especially for first/last mile trips, 2017-2020 (PI: Associate Prof. Erkki Karo), see more: https://www.sohjoabaltic.eu/

• Open Government Intelligence: Fostering Innovation and Creativity in Europe through Public Administration Modernization towards Supplying and Exploiting Linked Open Statistical Data, 2016-2019 (PI: Prof. Robert Krimmer), see more: http://www.opengovintelligence.eu
• LIPSE: Learning from innovation in Public Sector Environments (LIPSE), 2013-2016 (PI: Prof. Rainer Kattel), see more: http://lipse.org
• FESSUD: Financialisation, economy, society and sustainable development, 2011-2015 (PI: Prof. Rainer Kattel), see more: http://fessud.eu
• COCOPS: Coordinating for Cohesion in the Public Sector of the Future, 2011-2015 (PI: Prof. Tiina Randma-Liiv), see more: http://www.cocops.eu
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In addition to the EU Framework Programmes, our research has been funded also by other International funders, e.g.:

• Innovation and the state: How should government finance and implement innovation policy?, Institute of New Economic Thinking research grant, 2014-2015 (PI: Prof. Rainer Kattel)
• Understanding policy change: Financial and fiscal bureaucracy in the Baltic Sea Region, Norway-Estonia Research Cooperation Programme, 2014-2017 (PI: Prof. Ringa Raudla)

In Estonia, our research and development activities have been funded by:

• Estonian Research Council – prior ETAG and ETF personal and institutional grants and applied research projects on Estonian research and innovation systems carried out in the framework of the RITA programme, see more here
• Ministry of Education and Research – targeted financing, Innovation Policy Monitoring Programme (TIPS) 2011-2015, procurements to evaluate the Estonian research and innovatsioon strategies
• Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications – public procurements to assess the innovation and smart specialization dynamics in Estonia

Information on all R&D projects implemented at RND can be found in the Estonian Research Information System.