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Solutions to air pollution, heat and crises – Geospatial Challenge Camp 2025 concluded
The final event of the Geospatial Challenge Camp was held in early May, bringing together teams to present their innovative solutions to challenges in the well-being and health sector. The teams consisted of researchers and students from different universities and disciplines. The event was organised by the University of Turku, Aalto University and the University of Helsinki. This was the second Challenge Camp organised within the framework of the Location Innovation Hub, in collaboration with CSC and Geoportti.
"Challenge Camps and hackathons produce really interesting results, and it has been a pleasure to see that the ideas generated there can also take off. We are grateful to our skilled partners who support innovation by organising these events," says Eeva Sankari, Training and Skills specialist at Location Innovation Hub.
Six teams, six innovations
The final day offered a varied programme that included team pitches, expert presentations, a panel discussion and networking opportunities. Six teams produced interesting new solutions to various challenges:
Team EUrban Lab
Team Mapbeing
Team Eurika Collective
- EUrban Lab: The team developed a Telegram bot that allows users to report problems in the urban environment, such as broken or untidy objects, and suggest improvements. The solution offers an accessible and innovative way to collect environmental observations, which lowers the threshold for reporting problems.
- Team Mapbeing: The team developed a tool that helps parents choose a cleaner route to school for their children by combining air quality data and walking routes. The solution promotes healthy mobility and raises awareness of the effects of air quality on children's health, while supporting urban planning and sustainable development. The tool could also be used by parents or teaching staff who want to find the least polluted route to school for their children every day.
- Eurika Collective: The team developed an interactive geospatial tool that uses near real-time air quality data to assess city residents' exposure to air pollution. The tool provides tailored information to support decision-making by city planners and healthcare professionals, for example. Other research data on health risks could also be used to develop the tool.
Team GeoMind
Team GeoHeat
Team SafeFlow
- GeoMind: The team focused on visualising and analysing the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon by combining temperature sensor data and high-resolution environmental rasters using machine learning methods. The result was a temperature map that helps identify the hottest areas. This could be used to improve urban planning and, for example, manage health risks for older people.
- GeoHeat: The team combined location data related to urban heat islands with residents' experiences of heat to identify areas perceived as hot and support climate-adaptive urban planning. The solution utilises open data and QR code surveys, and the results are visualised on an online map that serves both urban planners and residents.
- SafeFlow: The team designed an additional feature for the Finnish 112 emergency app, which allows people to report their evacuation destination and offer or seek shelter in crisis situations. This could help authorities anticipate the need for health and social services. The solution supports public welfare and crisis management by providing real-time information on population movements and enabling more efficient allocation of resources.
The proposed solutions were of high quality
Geospatial Challenge Camp was not a competition, but a kind of living learning environment where students, researchers and experts could share their views and build new opportunities for cooperation. This year, the teams consisted mainly of doctoral and post-doctoral researchers with a high level of technical and substantive expertise.
"This resulted in high-quality solutions. On the other hand, the teams with a strong research background needed guidance along the way so that their research-oriented thinking could be translated into more solution-oriented thinking and they could consider the market potential and viability of the solutions as a business," says Associate Professor Henrikki Tenkanen from Aalto University.
The final event demonstrated how location-based solutions can provide concrete answers to the challenges of climate change, urban planning and crisis management – and how important it is to support the growth of young experts and cooperation across disciplines and borders.
- Find out more about Challenge Camp at challenge-camp.geoportti.fi
