Proekspert a winner in Future CityHack
Last weekend, Proekspert’s team won top three honors in the 48-hour Future CityHack Future CityHack, a cross-border Smart City hybrid hackathon on-site and online in Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, and Helsinki.
Hosted by TalTech’s Mektory Innovation Centre, the hackathon’s objective was to bring innovation to cities, and work together for a more sustainable and thoughtful future.
The team imagined a Tallinn Data Exchange platform to make data accessible between the public- and private sectors. Combining data from a variety of sources to a single platform, and adding Data Governance and Service Design on top, would enable the implementation of new smart and seamless services.
Why Future CityHack?
A smart city is a place where IT solutions are integrated to ensure resource efficiency and lower emissions, but these solutions also meet the needs of the population and improve their quality of life. It affects many areas of the city, including governance and services, transport, energy, the circular economy, health, construction, and urban planning.
Using data to avoid digital waste
Proekspert’s team decided to tackle the issue of digital waste. The team focused on the data that it assumed the City of Tallinn gathers daily. Knowing that the private sector also collects data which might be useful to the city, the team addressed the issue of bringing both public- and private data together on a single platform.
The Pitch: the Tallinn Data Exchange platform
Nothing irks a team of engineers more than unused data. It may be digital, but if it goes unused it’s still a waste. And since one man’s trash is another’s treasure, our team decided to recycle. They imagined a world where no data is left to collect dust – and they named it the Tallinn Data Exchange. It’s a single platform where public- and private companies can share, sell, and combine data. The organization would also handle data governance.
Imagine combining bus ticket validation data and location data to better plan bus routes or scooter availability. Or crowd-sourcing bicycling activity, combine it with traffic data, and know where to build new bicycle paths. Need a case study? Telia Finland reduced CO2 emissions by 13 tonnes per day by combining location data with public transportation route information! Bringing real-world data together delivers real results.
Proekspert’s team wanted to demonstrate how data can be used to make products and services more valuable. As denizens of Tallinn, our software company wants to help make Tallinn a data-driven city of tomorrow. And hopefully we’ll make that happen in real life. We’ve already met with the City of Tallinn’s Digital Director and the Tallinn Future City Office to talk about how our work for Future CityHack might have direct application for our city.
