Smart Urban Spaces

Smart Urban Spaces -project is developing smart city services that work from one country to another

Accessible by mobile phone, these services aim to make urban living easier. Near field technologies (f. ex. NFC) are used to ensure the ease of use of the services. NFC enables using services by a simple touch.

Pilot projects in the Helsinki Metropolitan area range over three different thematic areas: traffic, tourism and events and, daycare. Embedding NFC enabled services in the urban environment has been tested for both tourists’ and city inhabitants’ services.

User experiences from everyday life

Walk and Feel Helsinki pilot tests a new kind of city interface; how can electronic tags be combined with digital travel services.  Signs along the route are equipped with NFC tags and 2D barcodes. The service can be accessed by mobile phone, or a free application.

The multiuse of the Helsinki Region Travelcard was tested in the European Sailing Championships. The card was used as an intelligent race badge, which worked simultaneously as an ID card, food voucher, public transportation pass and access control system. Data on the race passes was read with NFC equipped phones.

NFC technology’s use in monitoring presence in daycare centers has been tested in the Nappula-pilot. Through diminishing manual monitoring and reporting, more time can be spent for pedagogic work and time together with the children.  The personnel of the daycare centers, as well as parents of the children, have played an integral part in the development of the service.

Wide and international network

The Smart Urban Spaces is a joint European research project involving nine cities from Finland, France and Spain. Started in July 2009, it will last until 2012.  

More than 30 cooperation partners both from the public and private sector are participating to the project.

The research organizations involved are VTT Research Centre of Finland, the University of Bordeaux, the University of Caen, AICIA and ESI Tecnalia. The participating companies are While on the Move, Fara, Top Tunniste, Bonwal, Thales, NXP Semiconductors, Gemalto, CEV-Group, Intelligeré, Applicam, Moviquity, Telvent, CBT, Palma Tools, Visual Tools and Avenzis & ITMC.

sushelsinki.wordpress.com/category/SUS
www.smarturbanspaces.org

Further information
Project Manager Kaisa Spilling,
tel. +358 40 744 8831,
kaisa.spilling(at)forumvirium.fi