The Digital Twins Hackathon – Building sustainable futures within the most functional city event held on 25–27 November 2022 brought 17 teams to solve challenges related to urban maintenance, urban logistics, smart housing and circular economy.
Winners of the winter maintenance and logistics challenge
The logistics challenge involved utilising Stara’s logistics data as the basis for delving into transport optimisation, modelling more sustainable work planning and transport chains, and brainstorming ideas for potentially allocating capacity in a marketplace-like format.
First place in the logistics challenge entitled Reboot logistics: Optimising for sustainable supply chains, provided by Forum Virium Helsinki and Stara, was awarded to the teams NFleet and CityHermes.
Shared first prize (€1,500): NFleet
Team members: Jouko Nieminen, Tuukka Puranen and Olli Salmivaara
In their solution, NFleet carried out an analysis of the current state of Stara’s logistical performance and utilised data analysis and a calculation model to develop a proposal for supporting logistical optimisation and making the use of transport capacity more efficient.
Shared first prize (€1,000): CityHermes
Team members: Janne Ruohonen, Henri Malkki and Mirka Hautala
In their solution, CityHermes produced a transport solution entitled StaraNappi for optimising urban logistics, reducing emissions and raising the service level.
The main objective of the winter maintenance challenge was to use Stara’s winter maintenance production data as the basis for developing alternative work plans to achieve more equal winter maintenance of non-motorised traffic routes and a more accessible urban environment.
The winter maintenance challenge entitled Overcome winter conditions to improve equal urban mobility, provided by Forum Virium Helsinki and Stara, was won by the team Mobility Gang.
First prize (€2,500): Mobility Gang
Team members: Peiling Wu, Valentine Desreumaux, Marc Jacob García, Ivo DG and Leonard Stenger
In their solution, Mobility Gang produced a model in which winter maintenance optimisation and information sharing could facilitate year-round accessibility of non-motorised traffic routes and thus a better utilisation rate to support sustainable mobility.
“The jury had their work cut out for them, as all the teams taking part in the hackathon had found something interesting and pivotal to the challenge in their solutions,” comments Unit Director Sami Aherva from Stara, who was a member of the logistics challenge jury.
“Nevertheless, the decision regarding both the logistics and the winter challenge was ultimately clear: the winners responded to the challenge description and produced credible solutions for their chosen area based on the data provided. We are looking forward to having further discussions with the teams.”
The hackathon as an accelerator of the digital twin for mobility
The Digital Twins Hackathon was born from a desire to find innovative solutions to support sustainable and functional urban life. The urban maintenance, urban logistics, smart housing and circular economy challenges of the event were built on identified needs.
Forum Virium and Stara provided their challenges for the Digital Twins Hackathon as part of the LiiDi2 project. LiiDi2 creates a model for the digital twin for mobility in cooperation with businesses and the City’s units. The digital twin for mobility provides a virtual representation of the traffic system, the traffic environment and traffic conditions. It combines different information sources and opens new possibilities for simulating urban structures and development. Digital twins also make it possible to anticipate future needs and thus develop new services. Stara’s datasets are part of Helsinki’s digital twin, and the solutions devised in the hackathon provide new ways to utilise it.
“In addition to the teams’ agile ideas, the hackathon gave us an excellent opportunity to test the identification, description and deployment process of data sources. It also showed us the utilisation potential of the data in the teams’ solution proposals,” comments Project Manager Helmi Tuori from Forum Virium Helsinki.
“We will continue our work based on what we have learned from the hackathon, and our next order of business will be to discuss winter maintenance data sources and use cases at the public HRI Loves Developers event on 26 January 2023,” Tuori continues.
Digital Twins Hackathon
Forum Virium Helsinki and Stara (LiiDi2), together with Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, held the Digital Twins Hackathon – Building sustainable futures within the most functional City event in Helsinki on 25–27 November 2022.
Metropolia University of Applied Sciences provided two challenges for the hackathon, as well as a beautiful event venue, the recently completed Myllypuro campus. Metropolia’s partner organisations in the hackathon were Urban Tech Helsinki, KiraHub, ABB and Skanska.
The LiiDi2 (Forum Virium Helsinki and Stara) challenges were based on Stara’s production data and open complementary data sources. Data or platform access was provided for the challenges by HRI Helsinki Region Infoshare, GSGroup Finland, Tietorahti, and Ramboll Brutus.
The hackathon was produced by Forum Virium Helsinki, Stara and Metropolia in collaboration with Ultrahack Oy.
More information:
Unit Leader Sami Aherva
phone: +358 (0)9 31078571
e-mail: sami.aherva@hel.fi
LiiDi2-hanke
Helmi Tuori
phone: +358 40 617 5333
e-mail: helmi.tuori@forumvirium.fi
Toni Liikamaa
phone: +358 405069704
e-mail: toni.liikamaa@hel.fi