Published on 06.01.2025
Written by FinEst Centre for Smart Cities
A big thank you to everyone who joined us on our journey in 2024, or who has been working with us for a while now! We’re excited to continue building strong collaborations as we work together toward smarter, better cities.
Take a look back at FinEst Centre’s 2024 highlights—here’s to an inspiring year!
November marked the official beginning of UrbanSplash, a new ambitious pilot project that aims to create a nearly real-time assessment of urban bathing water quality. The winning project of Smart City Challenge 3rd round aims to tackle the urgent issue of bathing water contamination, which poses serious health risks and causes economic losses.
The UrbanSplash solution will be developed and piloted in three cities: Tartu in Estonia, and Fingal and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown in Ireland.
Project will run for three years, and the aim is to design a scalable solution that is easily adaptable to different urban environments. Total budget of the project is 1.2 million euros.
Our exceptional research and innovation teams in Estonia and Finland remain at the center of our work. In 2024, researchers working at and around the FinEst Centre published an impressive number of 116 academic publications.
To foster closer collaboration, Dr. Kaija Veskioja has been leading a research seminar twice a month. These informal sessions, featuring presentations and discussions, allow researchers to share ideas, give feedback, and explore each other’s work.
It’s taking place as an informal and friendly roundtable with 1-2 presentations per seminar. During 2024 we shared updates about our multiple international collaboration projects, as well as individual research topics and projects like Transitioning Energy Governance, Introduction to Machine Learning Techniques, Smart City Centers, and presentations of our PhD students to support their research and preparations for upcoming defenses.
Guest researchers are very welcome to join the seminar, let us know if you’re interested and let’s find a suitable slot together.
During the year, our team members participated in over 60 conferences, presenting research papers, project updates, and engaging in professional discussions. At the flagship event Smart City World Expo in Barcelona, we had the chance to give a presentation about our Citizen Well-being Diagnostics solution.
Special congratulations to Serio Agriesti and Luiza Schuch de Azambuja for successfully defending their doctoral theses!
In 2024, we proudly hosted over 10 international delegations from regions as diverse as Japan, Singapore, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Germany, and beyond. These visits and discussions are crucial steps toward fostering strong cross-border collaborations and sharing innovative solutions globally.
On the project front, our international engagement continues to grow, with active participation in over 15 projects. This year, we added seven new initiatives to our portfolio, further strengthening our commitment to driving impactful, global smart city development.
We kicked off our year 2024 with a lovely team winter event in January, planning the year ahead and enjoying the winter fun of Estonia.
We welcomed a new PhD student Farah Elbehairy in our team, as well as the new Business Development Manager Anneli Simm, and Sille Sepp, the new Head of Urban Data Ecosystems.
Our Founding Director Ralf-Martin Soe visited Stanford first in the spring of 2023 as Global Digital Governance Fellowship. As a result, we’ve established a good collaboration and many common interests in developing smarter cities. FinEst Centre hosted two interns from Stanford University in the summer of 2024. We’re happy to announce that this collaboration will continue, and we’ll host new internships from Stanford in summer of 2025!
President of Estonia, Mr. Alar Karis, hosted an official dinner to welcome Finland’s new president Alexander Stubb and celebrate Estonian-Finnish strong relationships. We are truly honored that at the event and in his speech, President Karis brought out FinEst Centre as a great example of this collaboration:
Estonian President Alar Karis (May 27, 2024):
„Since I, myself have worked in the research community, I am particularly pleased about the collaborations between Estonian and Finnish researchers. Take the FinEst Centre for Smart Cities, an international R&D center founded in collaboration between Tallinn University of Technology and Aalto University. It generates novel, clever smart city solutions, not limited only to Tallinn and Helsinki but now many other cities in Europe. It’s a dynamic example of cooperation originating in shared values: innovation and a good living environment.“
We’re eager to continue the collaborations started previously. We’ll host our own flagship event Smart City Exchange Forum already 5th time, and it will take place on March 13th – save the date! You can join online as well, but we’d be happy to see you joining us in Tallinn to use the opportunity of meeting people and having fruitful discussions.
Continuing the journey of Smart City Challenge started in 2024, we’ve chosen six finalists, and they will present their pilot project proposals by April 30th. September 1st will be the start of hopefully 4 new pilot projects.
We wish you all a successful new year and let’s continue creating smarter and better cities for all.
Happy new year!
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The pilot projects are 100% financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research.
