Blog: Safety and security greetings – Home and abroad

We, residents of Tampere Region, are not only innovative developers of new products and services but also quick to apply inventions made elsewhere for our own use. While companies compete in products and services, regions also compete in operating models. Therefore, we must find out which operating models are the best globally and understand how they should be applied here.

As part of the Tampere Region’s smart safety and security development, we surveyed Finnish and European safety and security clusters. The goal was to outline the key themes and operating models for benchmarking and possible collaboration. There are a number of different safety and security clusters operating in Finland, of which we can highlight the chemical and environmental safety cluster Safesaimaa (Mikkeli), Cyber Security Ecosystem (Jyväskylä), Human Security Finland (Kuopio) as well as the Tourism Safety and Security Network in Lapland. Recognised European safety and security clusters included the Hague Security Delta (Holland), Safe Cluster (France), Leader in Security (Belgium), Security Network Munich (Germany), Center for Defense, Space & Security (Denmark) and Estonian Defence & Security Innovation Cluster (Estonia).

The European safety and security clusters typically consisted of a separate non-profit organisation as well as members who had signed a membership agreement and paid an annual membership fee. In the clusters, determining the strategy and running the operational side had been separated from each other. The actions of the clusters related to facilitating the network and supporting the companies in areas such as market entry and growth, innovation support, joint projects, training and up-to-date sector information as well as funding opportunities and events. If these actions are compared to the wishes of companies in the Tampere city region, it can be noted that quite similar needs can be detected.

Download the analysis of European safety and security clusters

Who is involved in the European safety and security projects?

In addition to the clusters, we studied European EU projects directly linked with safety and security (101 FP7 and 55 Horizon 2020 projects). The projects most often involved participants from heavily populated European countries (Germany, UK, Italy, France) but, in relation to the population, the most active countries in terms of the number of approved projects were Slovenia, Gibraltar, Luxembourg and Estonia. In relation to the population, the Nordic countries stood out positively.

The analysis of the EU projects determined both the organisations with the most responsibility for coordination and leading the work on the European scale as well as the most actively involved organisations in each country. This information will be highly useful when participating in safety- and security-related H2020 projects and the future framework programme’s safety and security projects.

In Finland, the most active participant in safety and security projects has been VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. On the European scale, the parties with the most coordination responsibility have been: AIT – Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Austria (4 responsibilities); Fraunhofer, Germany (4 responsibilities); Technikon, Austria (3 responsibilities); and Leonardo, Italy (3 responsibilities).

Download the analysis of European safety and security projects

How do safety and security show in European smart cities?

There are a number of cities in Europe with a smart city strategy. We wanted to find out how safety and security have been taken into account in these strategies.

Of the 129 cities studied, only 11 had integrated safety and security as part of the smart city strategy. These cities were Berlin (Germany), Bologna (Italy), Dortmund (Germany), Glasgow (UK), Kiev (Ukraine), London (UK), Nice (France), Perth (UK), Prague (Czech Republic), Strasbourg (France), Turku (Finland) and, as a point of reference, Tampere (Finland). Interestingly, the analysis suggested that Tampere was the only city to extensively cover safety and security as a cross-sectional theme.

Download the analysis of European smart cities

In addition to the strategy review, interesting operating models have been recognised in the activities of the aforementioned safety and security clusters and cities that could also be suitable for implementation in Tampere Region. For example:

• Involving citizens in building safety and security and rewarding safe and secure activities (with swimming hall, museum or amusement park tickets, for instance)
• Crowdsourcing the survey of the sense of security to the residents – sense of security combined to area, time and situation
• Offering risk management training as a gamified solution to city residents while increasing awareness and recognition of new perspectives

The international analyses were produced for us by Marion Chevalier, who was employed in Tampere as a trainee through her studies. Marion is just the kind of international expert who we hope will find the Tampere city region, and I also encourage other organisations to be active and offer internships to future developers of smart cities.

The “Safety and security greetings” blog posts cover the activities under the Smart Tampere programme’s smart safety and security theme. The next post (3 October) will take a closer look at what is new in the field of smart safety and security in the Tampere region and how the operations of the Tampere Region Safety and Security Cluster have developed.