Hackathons
A hackathon is a facilitated event in which a group of people meet up for a predetermined time to work on solutions to given challenges. What is common for these events is that the participants are enthusiastic, and they boldly jump into working on something completely new.
The needs of a city can be submitted as a challenge to hackathon participants. This gives the participants the opportunity to think up solutions that may have a major impact on people’s everyday lives.
The City of Tampere has participated for example the biggest hackathon in Europe Junction (picture) and organised a hackathon of its own with Industryhack.
Hackathon as part of public procurement
If the city wishes to later test and further develop solution ideas created at a hackathon, the event can be considered part of a public procurement process. In this event, there is no need for a separate competitive bidding. The solution can be flexibly tested directly with the team that came up with the idea. Adequate proactive measures also enable joint further development and order placement after the experiment.
Even though a hackathon can be adjusted as part of procurement proceedings, this may not always be the most appropriate choice. The optimal procedure should always be determined on a case-by-case basis, with an eye to the particular needs and objectives.
Tampere.Finland app
The free-of-charge, truly user friendly mobile application responds to the needs of both residents and travellers, combining several useful services. The application was created and is further developed by Geniem Oy, in cooperation with the City and Visit Tampere.
Smart lighting
In the smart lighting pilot the city wanted to optimize the efficiency of the street lighting’s grid. The information from a 3D model of the city was combined with the global lighting scheme and the meteorological data, in order to manage each lighting point more accurately according to time of day, exact location and the weather. Night-time traffic flow data was included within the model, so that the lighting is perfectly adapted to traffic intensity.
Making the lighting system smart allows Tampere to reduce its energy consumption. The pilot was created by Remod and Arcventure.
Block-by-Block
A block-by-block concept, that will be tested in Viinikka city district, enables scaling smart city IoT solutions block by block. The solution is based on an open IoT platform, which gives service providers an opportunity to integrate their sensors or apps into the system. The city will test for example smart ligting in this platform. The pilot will be carried out by Wirepas Oy and Capelon Ab.
