Finland is one the leading countries investing in digital technologies. BEYOND’s lucky to have in its team a Finnish organisation specialised in smart cities applications.. That’s Forum Virium Helsinki (FVH) a non-profit enterprise owned by the City of Helsinki. Founded in 2006, FVH is an innovation unit of the City who plays a key role in developing and implementing the Smart City and Open City strategies. Forum Virium Helsinki’s approach for driving the Smart City development lies in the promotion of Open API and Open Data strategies as well as coordination of new urban development projects and initiatives. The operating model of Forum Virium Helsinki is based on user-driven open innovation to call it either agile development or culture of experimentation.
Making the data generated by the buildings more accessible is a key factor for the implementation of 3D: Decarbonization, Decentralization & Digitization of the energy landscape of the buildings.
What FVH’s up to?
In the context of the BEYOND project, FVH’s high-level goal is to improve the adaptation of smart building technologies by leveraging IoT-driven data collection, conceptualizing semantic interoperability for building data, and consulting the City on housing regulations. In BEYOND, Forum Virium Helsinki represents the Finnish demo partner who facilitates the roll-out and implementation of five demonstration cases in Helsinki. This involves data collection of smart metering devices, installed & existings IoT sensors, building energy management (BEM) systems, and demographic data from hundreds of buildings in order to support urban planning via the application of
- Building Digital Twin and AI Analytics for energy performance optimization and predictive maintenance improvement
- Crystal City Simulation Tool for informed, evident, and optimized energy policy-making by providing higher accuracy demand forecasts to the impact assessment tool
- Renovation Decision Support Tool for optimized investments planning of renovation projects by Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) and reduction of risks associated with Energy Performance Contracting (EPC) models.
Finally, Forum Virium Helsinki will establish BEYOND Living Lab activities in order to incorporate user-driven innovation methodology and agile development alongside the technical developments. The Living Lab activities will be oriented to obtain feedback from major stakeholders and to create opportunities for further exploitation and replication of the project results.
Reaping the benefits
The benefits of the BEYOND project for Helsinki come mainly from the improved accessibility and sharing of the building-generated data in higher granularity which comprise key factors towards realization of Decarbonization, Decentralization, and Digitalization of the buildings’ energy ecosystem. By enabling informed evaluation, monitoring, and planning of energy systems, BEYOND will support cities’ Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs) which in terms of Finnish demo means the City Of Helsinki’s Carbon-neutral Helsinki 2035 Action Plan. The latter benefits of BEYOND are however in line with the City of Helsinki Data Strategy which aims at enhancing the utilization of data and analytics to identify users’ service needs, optimizing the City’s operations and resources by fully harnessing the potential of digitalization and stimulating business opportunities by sharing data.
