FinEst Centre for Smart Cities

As power systems become more complex with the increased integration of renewable energy, the ability to control and suppress harmonics will be crucial for maintaining system reliability and efficiency ⚡🔋 Authors review recent methods to detect, suppress, and estimate harmonic distortions in power systems. They highlight traditional approaches like Fourier analysis and newer techniques such as machine learning, while exploring tools like filters and models that improve performance in modern grids with renewable energy and electric vehicles. See the full paper by Noman Shabbir & colleagues: "A Review of Harmonic Detection, Suppression, Aggregation, and Estimation Techniques" published in Applied Sciences MDPI 👇 #Harmonics #PowerQuality #ElectricalEngineering #HarmonicFilters #EnergyEfficiency #PowerElectronics #HarmonicDistortion #EnergyManagement #TalTech

World Smart Cities Outlook 2024 by UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme) 🌍👇 By 2050, 68% of the global population is predicted to live in urban areas—a significant rise from 57% in 2023. This rapid urbanization, paired with technological advancements, presents complex challenges across various aspects of urban development. People-centered smart cities could offer a way forward, leveraging digital innovation to meet urban communities' needs while addressing societal and environmental impacts. Will this be key to shaping resilient and future-ready cities? 🔗 See the full outlook here: https://lnkd.in/d8QuC4E9 #SmartCities #UrbanDevelopment #UrbanChallenges #Urbanization

Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää! Happy 107th Independence Day Finland! 💙 As a centre based on Finnish-Estonian research and innovation partnerships, we wish all of our colleagues and friends a very lovely day, celebrating your country's independence. Happy to have Finland as a neighbor! #Suomi #Finland #Itsenäisyyspäivä #FinlandIndependenceDay #Suomi107

Example of excellence at the Excellence Hubs & Teaming Networking Event in Brussels 🤝🏛 On November 28, the European Research Executive Agency (REA) and DG Research & Innovation organized a full-day event in Brussels for participants of the Excellence Hubs and Teaming initiatives. The event focused on building connections, sharing experiences, and exploring best practices in research and innovation. We were honored to be chosen as the #TeamingProject that got to share what we’ve been doing! Ralf-Martin Soe and Marko Nieminen presented the FINEST Twins project, detailing its journey in establishing the FinEst Centre. They gave a short overview of our main research themes, team activities, and our developed smart city solutions and upcoming pilot projects. We could also hear the experience and get a glimpse into the activities of SolarHub, a Greek-Turkish Solar Energy Excellence Hub to advance European Green Deal. Presentations were followed by sessions to discuss and sketch solutions for various challenges. Participants joined discussions on upscaling, funding, and community building, policy making, sustainable collaboration and other. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect, engage in meaningful discussions, and find inspiration for future projects and activities. Great thanks to Agne Dobranskyte-Niskota, Federica Roffi, all organisers and participants! #ResearchandInnovation #SmartCities #EuropeanCommission #CentreofExcellence

Congratulations to Eduard Kärstna, the 2024 Recipient of Tallinn’s City Council Scholarship! 🎓🏙️ Eduard Kärstna has been awarded the City Council Scholarship (Raestipendium) to support the writing of his Master's Thesis titled "Tallinn as a 15-Minute City: How to Create It?" His research explores the possibilities of designing City of Tallinn in line with the 15-minute city concept, ensuring that essential services and facilities – workplaces, schools, shops, healthcare, sports venues, and recreational areas – are all accessible within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. The thesis is supervised by Ralf-Martin Soe, Head of FinEst Centre. The City Council Scholarship supports outstanding Master's and Doctoral students whose research contributes to solving Tallinn's urban challenges and provides practical solutions for better city management. Congratulations to Eduard and all the other scholarship recipients! Wishing you success in your studies and in contributing to Tallinn's development. 🎉 📸 Photos: Tallinn Strategy Center #Scholarship #15MinuteCity #TallinnCity #UrbanDevelopment

Open #PhDPosition in Smart Mobility to develop Collaborative Multimodal Perception for Automated Vehicles! 🚍 If you or someone you know is ready to take the next important step in their (academic) career, but they've been waiting for the right moment, topic, and team... the wait is over! Prof. Mauro Bellone and Prof. Raivo Sell are looking for a motivated and ambitious PhD student to join their team. The focus of the research is enhancing the safety and efficiency of automated vehicles through the development of a collaborative multimodal perception system. The research will take place in the Autonomous Vehicles research group within the TalTech – Tallinn University of Technology's facility and using the innovative iseAuto autonomous shuttle v.2.0. The research aims to improve how automated vehicles detect and navigate complex environments, predict hazards, reduce accidents, and optimize traffic flow—paving the way for safer, smarter autonomous driving solutions. Don’t be shy to share the post to potential candidates! 📲 🔗 See more info, contacts & apply here: https://bit.ly/phdauto (don’t let the deadline distract you, it was extended) #SmartMobility #AutonomousVehicles #AcademicCareer #PhDStudent #PhDjob #SmartCity #UrbanInnovation

Is Estonian education one of the best in the world? 🎓🧐 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia will host a Virtual Forum today (Nov 28th) to discuss various aspects about Estonian education, alongside fascinating personal stories about their studying experiences in #Estonia. You can also see Ralf-Martin Soe's story about his extensive international experience and why he thinks Estonia is a magical place for someone ambitious to make their way to their dream career and life! 🤩 Education Minister Kristina Kallas will give the opening remarks and former President Toomas Hendrik Ilves will conclude the discussions. PS, there will be subtitles. 🔗 See agenda & find link to live here: https://lnkd.in/dXGzvuQy

Happy People at a Doctoral Writing Retreat 📝🤩 From November 13–15, our PhD students Pauline Baudens and Dominik Beckers attended a doctoral writing retreat in southern part of Estonia, in Pühajärve. The inspiring event brought together social sciences PhD students from across Estonia. The dedicated workspace provided a focused environment, and the shared motivation among participants made staying on task much easier 🤓 Beyond the academic productivity, the retreat offered a serene atmosphere with beautiful lake views and relaxing amenities (hello, pool, jacuzzi, and sauna!), creating a perfect balance between work and leisure. One of the highlights was working together with fellow PhDs, particularly those in social sciences working on digital topics. The connections made during the retreat hold great potential for future collaborations between researchers at different universities. By the way, we at FinEst Centre are very open to collaboration! Reflecting on the experience, Pauline shared how the retreat was a valuable reminder that community and collaboration are essential drivers of academic progress. #PhDlife #SocialSciences #AcademicCommunity #AcademicWriting #DoctoralThesis

Smart City innovations on the Cityscape Global stage 🌍 Our Innovation Lead, Külle Tärnov, has had a busy month, spreading news and inspiration about smart city initiatives on stages across the globe. As part of the #Cityscape conference in Riyadh, Külle joined a distinguished panel "AI Without Borders — Building Global Partnerships for Innovation." Alongside global urban leaders like Nikola Barbutov (Deputy Mayor of Sofia), Jorge Saraiva (President of the European Network of City Policy Labs), and Stephen Yarwood (renowned urbanist and former Lord Mayor of Adelaide), the panel explored how AI can transcend boundaries to shape smarter, more inclusive cities. Külle shared examples of AI in action through Herbarium.ai and UrbanSplash solutions. These tools demonstrate how AI can drive the development of smarter, greener cities 🌱 However, she also discussed our Well-being Diagnostics solution, where the use of AI is more limited due to the complexity and diversity of human experiences—highlighting that some areas require a more human-centric approach. If you want to know more about our research-based solutions for smarter cities, look here 👉 https://lnkd.in/def6QzzQ #CityScapeGlobal #SmartCities #AIInnovation #UrbanInnovation

New project announcement 🔊 The FINEX project is here to accelerate the deployment and uptake of cleantech solutions across Europe! We're looking forward to the progress and impact we can create being part of this powerful collaboration bringing together Europe's leading innovation ecosystems, policy making advocates in cleantech sector and other centres of excellence, to support the green and digital transformation. 📲 Follow FINEX project updates on linkedin. 🔗 Read more about the project & partners: https://lnkd.in/dYj7AtgY A glimpse of the team at the kick-off meeting 👇 #GreenTransition #DigitalInnovation #Cleantech #EUEcosystems #InnovationHubs #CleantechStartups #DeepTech