Mobility Lab Helsinki starts operations: Digital twin lays foundation for innovations
Mobility Lab Helsinki is a testbed for new smart mobility innovations. For companies, it offers opportunities to develop and pilot new services and technologies. The project particularly delves into the efficient utilisation of mobility data and digital twins.
Helsinki is known around the world as a city at the forefront of smart mobility. Mobility Lab Helsinki continues Helsinki’s long-standing work to create the best urban testbed in the world for developers of smart mobility.
At the Mobility Lab, companies can develop new services together with the City of Helsinki, other companies, research organisations and residents. The Mobility Lab seeks solutions to challenges in urban mobility and supports the City of Helsinki’s climate and data strategy objectives. The aim is to find and test functional solutions that also meet global challenges, are scalable to other cities and create new business opportunities for local companies.
“We want to make Helsinki the best place in the world to pilot and develop effective solutions based on traffic and mobility data,” says Project Manager Juho Kostiainen from the Economic Development Department of the City of Helsinki.
The City of Helsinki’s Economic Development Department and innovation company Forum Virium Helsinki are in charge of the Mobility Lab’s operations.
The digital twin shows the amount of traffic and indicates infrastructure maintenance needs
The operations of Mobility Lab Helsinki are wrapped around the utilisation of mobility data and Helsinki’s digital twin in particular, but they also cover other new smart mobility services.
“Traffic is undergoing a rapid digital transformation. This offers new opportunities to make use of data and also combine it with other information on the urban environment. The Mobility Lab supports the sharing, use and combination of data sets in the development of new services by companies,” says Project Manager Janne Rinne from Forum Virium Helsinki.
The digital twin of the traffic system provides a virtual representation of the system, the traffic environment and conditions. It combines a number of data sources provided by various operators and constantly updated information.
The digital twin can indicate the amounts of traffic, the structure of infrastructure or the need for maintenance, for example. Combining different data sources makes it possible to create innovations and added value. Potential parties that can make use of the digital twin include not only the transport industry but also other industries, such as trade, real estate and construction, logistics, tourism, analysis and city planning services, and the developers of various AI solutions.
Prior development work in Jätkäsaari provides a good foundation
Mobility Lab Helsinki continues the work of Jätkäsaari Mobility Lab, which concluded at the end of last year. The operations are part of the City of Helsinki’s testbed operations that cover different themes. Over the last three years, the Jätkäsaari and West Harbour area has served as a testbed for dozens of successful mobility innovations of different kinds, such as new mobility services and water transport services, incentives for smart mobility and new methods of collecting traffic data.
Mobility Lab Helsinki was launched at the start of this year, and its operations will continue until the end of 2024. More information about ongoing activities and piloting opportunities can be found on the Mobility Lab Helsinki website, which will be updated during April.
Photo: Mättö Media
