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

Internet of Everything is recognised to be one of the dominant ways transforming the way we manage and live in our urban environments in the future. The extension of the Internet to the physical spaces and objects is a massive opportunity for new services and business for example in the areas of logistics, transport, environment, security and wellbeing. Internet of everything is directly linked to the smart city development, but it has proceeded slower than expected. The key showstoppers are the lack of common standards, fragmented marketplace, and lack of ways to systematically test and introduce new solutions in the cities. The common challenge of the SELECT for Cities PCP is the design, research and development of “cities as linked and large-scale Internet of Everything labs”. The challenge lies in developing an open, standardized, data-driven, service-oriented and user-centric platform that enables large-scale co-creation, testing and validation of urban IoE applications and services. This approach fosters the longer-term goal of evidence-based innovation in cities. The envisaged platform has several requirements, components & features that are currently not available in existing solutions. The platform must allow collaboration between departments and cities, and (automated) testing of IoE services. The design should be based on an open and modular approach, and support cloud-based, data-driven, service-oriented, user-centric, and co-created large-scale testing. The joint effort of the partners procuring this pre-commercial track lies in guarding the integration capabilities of the platform with solutions that exist in the respective cities today. Particular attention will thus need to be paid to technologies and tools that allow smooth communication and integration between these existing solutions. The end goal of SELECT for Cities is taking the idea of the city as a large Internet of Everything Lab and putting it into practice.

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.