There is a clear political and business interest in strengthening the cooperation between the cities of Tallinn and Helsinki, and Estonia and Finland respectively, in terms of research, innovation and economic development (Twin cities mindset). A recent policy report by OECD suggests to extend the definition of Tallinn-Helsinki cross-border area to the greater Helsinki (Uusimaa), and Estonia to the entire country, considering the comparable population (1.3-1.4 m), Helsinki’s close scientific and innovation ties to Tartu, the Estonian second largest city, and the fact that innovation policies are implemented at national level in Estonia whereas regional level in Finland. Building on the political, social and economical support both in Estonia as well as in Helsinki city, this proposal provides a good opportunity to kick-start a closer cooperation through the planning and development of a Smart City Centre of Excellence joint venture in Tallinn. The ICT driven Smart City CoE would act as a hub capable of combining the scientific knowledge, innovation capacity and entrepreneurship of all relevant actors in Estonia and the greater Helsinki region. This proposed FINEST TWINS joint venture is based on smart specialisation strategies and marks a new model for close cooperation. Estonia will benefit from Helsinki region expertise, its living labs methodologies knowledge and public-private multiple ventures as Helsinki is one of the top European Smart Cities. Helsinki will also benefit from Estonia public innovativeness in the uptake of e-Government services, overall agility and comprehensive citizens capacity to embrace new digital service solutions, making it one of the best test-beds in the world. The CoE will be the first EU cross border Smart City solutions and demo lab capable of provide urban services and attract international expertise and investment, as well as, act as a springboard for the exportation of Finnish-Estonian knowledge and service solutions on a global scale.

The FINEST Twins project will build a multidisciplinary smart-city Center of Excellence (CoE) that mobilises all leading smart city actors and stakeholders in Estonia and establishes solid long-term high-level research, knowledge-transfer and innovation partnerships with the counterparts from the Helsinki region to capitalise on the macro region’s scientific research, innovation and entrepreneurship potential. The CoE will match the leading smart city research centres globally and focus on all five key domains of clean and sustainable smart city development: mobility, energy and built environment glued together by governance and urban analytics & data management (research streams). The FINEST Twins will have a globally unique focus on developing user-driven clean and sustainable smart city solutions that are “cross-border-by-default” in the context of emerging twin city between Tallinn and Helsinki. For this purpose, the CoE will set up an Urban Open Platform Lab (UOP.Lab) that develops and implements Research and Innovation (R&I) pilots. The CoE will attract international expertise and investment, and act as a springboard for exporting Finnish-Estonian knowledge and high-tech solutions globally. In the long run, the CoE has full autonomy, financial sustainability and it will increase Estonian R&I funding by 2% annually with a strong spill-over to the real economy. The CoE will have autonomous management, premises and 5 research streams producing the following KPIs by 2027: ·Estimated 100 research publications annually ·Estimated 150 Horizon 2020/FP9/ERC/Interreg/national submissions during the project period ·Estimated 25 local research and innovation partnerships ·Up to 15 Double degree PhD graduates annually ·The CoE will build knowledge transfer infrastructure, the UOP.Lab, via: · Estimated 100 unit innovation vouchers given out; · Rent-a-PhD and Startup-in-Residence programmes applied to PhDs and companies ·Minimum of 10 cross-border R&I pilots

The FABULOS PCP focuses on how the cities can use autonomous buses in a systemic way. Cities, such as Helsinki, already have a relatively integrated public transportation system,although not capable of absorbing or utilizing RTI in a systemic way for smart routing and such. Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) of Operation of an autonomous minibus service, for a specific line/zone in urban environment. Leading European Smart Cities have been running some of the world's first autonomous buses on open streets. The FABULOS PCP goal is to push the market to creation of smart systems for the management of autonomous electric bus fleet operations and related services, in urban environments This sort of intelligent transportation systems and integrated transportation approaches, are key to enable a sustainable development of public transportation and for cities to be able to become car free in a foreseeable future. Autonomous buses are a key part of this future. The robotic bus technology is fast approaching its market readiness stage; however current transportation systems are not equipped to deal with such type of transportation. The management of autonomous fleet as part of public transport is missing. Also some parts of the driving automation need to mature. The PCP should now focus on how the cities can use autonomous buses in a systemic way. Cities, such as Helsinki, already have a relatively integrated public transportation system, although not capable of absorbing or utilizing RTI in a systemic way for smart routing and such. In order to capitalize on the potential of autonomous buses, Cities should combine efforts in pushing the market to develop system solutions capable of bridging autonomous bus technologies and the cities public transportation systems, helping them to become smarter in the process, and also helping to open up demand for the autonomous vehicles industry.

The OpenGovIntelligence project aims at stimulating sustainable economic growth in Europe through fostering innovation in society and enterprises. Towards this end, OpenGovIntelligence suggests a holistic approach for the modernization of Public Administration (PA) by exploiting Linked Open Statistical Data (LOSD) technologies. This includes new business processes, policies, and tools that will enable the active participation of the society and enterprises in data sharing and in the co-production of innovative data-driven public services. The objectives of the OpenGovIntelligence project include: • The identification of challenges in opening up and exploiting LOSD for the co-production of innovative data-driven public services. • The creation of a framework comprising business processes, policies, and data infrastructure architectures. This framework specifies a user-centric LOSD Innovation Ecosystem that orchestrates the collaboration of society and PA for opening up and exploiting LOSD to address relevant challenges and facilitate the co-production of innovative data-driven public services. • The delivery of the OpenGovIntelligece ICT toolkit comprising easy-to-use and user-centric tools to facilitate realizing the LOSD Innovation Ecosystem. • The OpenGovIntelligence pilots in six countries to validate and prove the usability and effectiveness of the LOSD Innovation Ecosystem. The pilots will develop services at both national and local level to tackle societal and PA challenges in various problem areas such as internal decision-making in PAs, enhancing e-services provided by Points of Single Contact in Europe, and improving policy-making in the areas of environment protection, economic growth, and unemployment.

ACCORD's objective is to digitalise permitting and compliance processes using BIM and other data sources to improve the productivity and quality of design and construction processes, support the design of climate-neutral buildings and advance a sustainable built environment in line with the EU Green Deal and new European Bauhaus initiative. These digitized processes must be human-centred, transparent and cost-effective for the permit applicants and authorities. Another objective is to develop and integrate technical solutions for automating compliance checking of buildings in their design, construction and renovation/demolition lifecycle phases. All this will be based on open and neutral data exchange standards. ACCORD will develop a semantic framework for European digital building permitting processes, regulations, data and tools. This framework will drive rule formalization and integration of existing compliance tools as microservices. Solutions and tools are to be developed, providing consistency, interoperability and reliability with national regulatory frameworks, processes and standards. The solutions are implemented and demonstrated across construction projects in various EU regulatory contexts: UK, Finland, Estonia, Germany and Spain. ACCORD supports work programme KSOs, expected outcomes and impacts by 1) developing open APIs allowing local authorities to choose their digital services without a lock-in, 2) automating the checking of environmental regulations (CO2 emissions, LCA and circular economy) by developing machine-readable rules, thus steering the digital and green transition, and involving relevant stakeholders through co-creation, and 3) creating information guidelines for structured data models to increase the value of buildings and reduce their operating costs and 4) providing the open ACCORD framework based on microservices allowing businesses to connect and develop solutions resulting in a scalable, durable and flexible permitting ecosystem.