Going smart, going sustainable 25/7 in Kalasatama

The city of Helsinki has chosen Kalasatama as its flagship district for the Smart City solutions, an active city innovation platform where new solutions can be developed and tested in a living urban environment. Citizens are already benefiting from innovations like shared electric cars, the ability to control their domestic environment remotely, and a pneumatic waste collection system that sucks bags of sorted household waste through pipelines to a central collection system.

Last spring there were experiments to improve flexible parking, on how to use energy data more efficiently and how we can make ecological ways of living to be more time saving. These all advance the vision of Smart Kalasatama – Saving One More Hour a Day for its citizen. Due to its holistic and citizen-driven approach, Kalasatama was selected last year into Smart Sustainable District Climate KIC programme for developing sustainable systemic change at the district level in Helsinki.

 

Objectives driving district development

This work for the Smart Sustainable District was further advanced with the second part of this programme, via an integrative workshop organized by Forum Virium Helsinki and TNO from the Netherlands on September 12-13th, 2017, in Smart Kalasatama Living Lab. The workshop was organized for elaborating Kalasatama development roadmap and indicators for Kalasatama for the next three years,  in order to become climate-positive and to provide “one more hour per day” for the citizens. The workshop built on the ongoing Smart Sustainable District work including the first phase on 2016, recent indicator workshop on August 17th, and development initiatives at the City of Helsinki, and it brought together about forty key experts from the city of Helsinki, city-owned energy company Helen, private sector companies, EIT Climate KIC, and universities from Helsinki, Munich and London.

During the first workshop day, the Smart Kalasatama 2030 framework previously developed with the city representatives and TNO was finalised, including targets and indicators for the Kalasatama district. As the result, two main targets were defined, namely Climate Neutrality and High Quality Neighbourhood, with sub-targets and indicator suggestions. These district targets also implement and advance the recently updated and tightened climate targets of the city to become carbon neutral by 2035, with -60 % total emission reduction by 2030 compared to 1990 level.

Complex challenges calling for integrated solutions

On the second workshop day, the participants defined joint development initiatives in the areas of Smart Energy, Smart Mobility, BlueGreen City and 25/7 High Quality Neighbourhood, using previously identified nineteen different development themes forKalasatama as an input. The outcomes were then evaluated against their potential to meet Smart Kalasatama 2030 targets as well as interests of the workgroup participants. The key areas to advance include integrated energy systems with a.o. plus-energy block and district, advancing local energy production, and energy data service; efficient and electric multimodal transport with a.o. last-mile logistics, sharing and adoption of electrical vehicles and sharing of parking slots; nature-based solutions with a.o. holistic co-design approach for district planning, green and blue building enabling healthy lifestyle, and seaside characteristics; as well as services for 25/7 with a.o. making local information visible, innovating public transportation stops and hubs and sharing of public and private spaces.

During the following two months, the roadmap for Smart Kalasatama will be further specified and turned to action plans with the SSD experts and the local stakeholders. In addition, three to four innovation projects will be developed to be presented to the City of Helsinki in December which will also become the basis for the next phase in the Smart Sustainable District flagship programme and for other innovation programmes.

Additional information:

About Smart Kalasatama:

Smart districts make smart cities

Contact:

Pentti Launonen, Development Manager
Smart Kalasatama
Mobile: +358 40 180 1300
pentti.launonen(at)forumvirium.fi

info(at)fiksukalasatama.fi

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