Espoo is Among European Capitals of Innovation 2019
Finnish city is among six winners of European Commission’s European Capital of Innovation (iCapital) Award for using innovation to improve lives of citizens
Omnia AI Lab, Espoo city’s adult education initiative, trained the world’s first 100 senior citizens as AI mentors to promote digital equality.
The City of Espoo and the Finnish software and service company Tieto completed an AI experiment that recognised risk group who need social support the most. The experiment used data of approximately 520,000 people and more than 37 million customer contacts.
Espoo aims to become the forerunner in developing ethical rules for AI to secure the data of its citizens.
Espoo received a prize of EUR 100,000 for being a top 6 city in the iCapital awards. The prize money will be used to continue similar digital experiments.
“We are going to continue piloting solution that decrease social exclusion and this way creates wellbeing. The big themes that we want to support are, for example, social integration and prevention of poverty of families with children,” says Mayor Jukka Mäkelä.
In addition to Espoo and Nantes (France), other iCapital top 6 cities were Antwerp (Belgium), Bristol (United Kingdom), Glasgow (United Kingdom) and Rotterdam (Netherlands).
Good work-life balance attracts talents to Espoo
While City as a Service is directed at current residents, Espoo also has a similar service model in place for international talents - Talent Boost Espoo.
Talent Boost Espoo is a community-driven initiative on the local level and part of the national Talent Boost Finland program. By partnering with local businesses and higher education institutes like Aalto University, Talent Boost Espoo paves the way for international talents to get a successful start to building a life and career in Espoo.
In addition to providing services that make it easy for talents to set their roots in the city, a healthy work-life balance is something that comes with the package of living in Espoo.
“Stress and long hours kill creativity. In Espoo, we have a healthy balance of work and free time. Espoo’s nature is stunning and it’s always close by - it’s a vital and energising resource in our lives,” explains Jaana Tuomi from Espoo Marketing.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190925005536/en/
Website: https://www.espooinnovationgarden.fi/en
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Contact
The City of Espoo
Jukka Mäkelä, Mayor
+35846 877 3953
jukka.makela@espoo.fi
Päivi Sutinen, Services Development Director
+35846 8772 871
paivi.sutinen@espoo.fi
Jasmin Repo, EU Affairs Coordinator
+35843 826 6886
jasmin.repo@espoo.fi
This news is a press release provided by The City of Espoo. Korea Newswire follows these editorial guidelines.
