€75,000 to be invested in the best ideas: European cities seek solutions for building future-ready urban spaces

On 24–25 September, the international City Resilience Hack will take place in Tallinn, bringing together talent, teams and startups to develop practical solutions for challenges related to urban resilience, continuity of services and stronger communities. The hackathon prize fund is €75,000, and the best teams will have the opportunity to move forward to pilot projects in cooperation with partner cities.

In a rapidly changing security, climate and technology environment, cities must be prepared for situations where regular services, information exchange or infrastructure may come under pressure. This creates a need for solutions that help cities plan better, make decisions faster, provide clearer information to people, and ensure that services and systems continue to function even in challenging circumstances.

City Resilience Hack focuses on future-oriented collaboration, bringing cities’ real needs together with expertise in technology, data, design, entrepreneurship and defence. Participants will work on challenges presented by Tallinn, Helsinki, Valencia, Dnipro and Lviv, developing solutions over two days that have the potential to be tested in urban environments after the hackathon.

According to Deputy Mayor Kristjan Järvan, Tallinn must already be preparing for the risks of the future. “City Resilience Hack brings together new ideas and practical approaches that can help find better solutions to the challenges cities face. International cooperation is also important — together with our partner cities, we can develop these ideas further and put them into practice. The participation of Ukrainian cities is particularly valuable, as their experience of operating in difficult conditions gives the hackathon clear added value and a practical dimension,” said Järvan.

The hackathon challenges focus on four areas: smart and connected digital platforms, resilient critical systems and operational response, crisis readiness and communication, and integrated health and social resilience. The challenges address, among other topics, data-driven decision-making, situational awareness, citizen engagement, reliable information exchange, continuity of infrastructure and services, and better coordination of health and social support.

Individuals, teams and startups are welcome to apply, particularly those with backgrounds in areas such as IT, defence, entrepreneurship, data, cybersecurity, logistics, urban planning, healthcare, or UX and UI design. The aim is to form multidisciplinary teams that can create solutions cities would be able to pilot, scale and use in practice.

“Tehnopol has long-standing experience in running startup, accelerator and innovation programmes, and we see how important it is to bring real problems together with technology, business thinking and user feedback as early as possible. The goal of this hackathon is not simply to collect ideas, but to reach solutions that have the potential to move forward into cities’ test environments and pilot projects,” said Agnes Roos, CEO of Tehnopol. As an additional opportunity, Tehnopol will also offer one outstanding hackathon team the chance to join Tehnopol’s accelerator programme, Roos added.

Tehnopol’s accelerator will support the selected team in further developing their solution by offering mentoring, training, support for business model development and access to networks. The purpose of the additional prize is to help strong ideas born during the hackathon reach the next stage of development and increase their readiness for the market and for raising investment.
Expected solutions may include, for example, digital platforms and situation monitoring dashboards, data-driven tools to support decision-making, crisis communication solutions, tools for citizen engagement and feedback collection, emergency logistics concepts, monitoring and situational awareness systems, and solutions for coordinating health and social support.

City Resilience Hack will take place on 24–25 September in Tallinn, Estonia as an on-site event, and the working language will be English. The application deadline is 10 September. The hackathon is organised by the City of Tallinn and Tehnopol together with the partner cities of Valencia, Helsinki, Dnipro and Lviv.

More information and applications: https://www.tehnopol.ee/en/project/city-resilience-hack/