Third round of the Smart City Challenge by FinEst Centre for Smart Cities has concluded, with a project selected to address bathing water quality assessment. The winning project, UrbanSplash, aims to tackle the urgent issue of bathing water contamination, which poses serious health risks and causes economic losses.

Pilot project has a budget of 1.2 million euros and will run for three years under the guidance of FinEst Centre.

We’re happy to introduce the ambitious research team driving this innovative project. Experts from TalTech, University of Tartu, and Dublin City University are combining their strengths to push the boundaries of smart city research. Each team member brings unique expertise and insights that will play a crucial role in advancing the project’s ambitious goals.

Here’s a closer look at the project teams leaders and experts leading the way!

Take a look at all team members: UrbanSplash teams and members

Team 1: Sensors & Environmental monitoring

Team lead: Ciprian Briciu-Burghina, PhD

Postdoctoral Researcher, Dublin City University

Main tasks/role in the project: Research and Quality Assessment Lead

Responsibility and tasks by role:

Technical Team (1) Leader

• Procurement & coordination of the sensors and instrumentation for monitoring bating water quality for the 3 piloting cities.
• Liaising with supplier and cities to ensure infrastructure is in-place in a timely manner to enable the development of technical solutions.
• Planning and coordinating grab-sampling spatial surveys to support high frequency data from in-situ sensors and instrumentation.
• Developing and implementing standard operating procedure for validating the sensors and instrumentation data, QC and QA.
• Coordinating the day-to-day activities of the research assistant hired in the project.

Research Quality Manager

• Coordinating and creating synergy between the research teams in UrbanSpash pilot project to deliver project outputs, including high quality technical solutions and research results.
• Coordinating sprint workshops with the research teams to plan research activities and identify potential technical barriers, issues and identify routes to mitigate risk to the project.
• Supporting the team leads with hiring of new researchers (job adverts, interviews etc)
• Ensuring all teams and team members participate and have input into the development process.
• Ensuring project deliverables and objectives are achieved according to the grant agreement timelines.
• Disseminating project outputs and national and international events, conferences and workshops.
• Developing a data management plan in collaboration with the research teams, city representatives and FinEst Centre.

Business Leader

• Expanding cities involvement in the solution development by identifying other cities as potential customers and by creating new partnerships.
• Identifying needed expertise to complement the current UrbanSplash team and develop a pathway to commercialisation.
• Developing a business model that is viable and scalable and a strategy for market entry.

Position in project: Researcher

Workload: 0,5

Team 3: Data Platform, Machine learning, Digital twin

Team lead: Sadok Ben Yahia, PhD

Adjunct Professor at Department of Software Science, Tallinn University of Technology

Main tasks/role in the project: Spatial PINN model development for FIB dispersion and forecast

Workload: 0,2

Find all team members and their roles: UrbanSplash teams and members