Category: Features
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IoT: Take Guessing Out of the Concrete Drying Process
Flooring, tiling, or painting on a concrete surface that is insufficiently dry can end up being a disaster. An experimental project recently used IoT sensors and AI to determine when it is safe to start finishing concrete surfaces. Haste and Imperfect Conditions Lead to Failure To successfully first cure and then dry concrete requires specific…
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A Portable Robot That Will Shake the Window Cleaning Industry
A Finnish startup wants to automate the way we clean and care for our building facades. Its compact robot is taking the world by the storm. “Back in 2016, I was painting a cow stable and cleaning its sheet metal roof. It was pretty tough work, balancing on a ladder. I almost had an accident…
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Hot PropTech in the Cool Nordics
RecoTech, the official side event of Slush, brought together PropTech enthusiasts from all over the world. Each presenter shed their own light on why we should keep our entrepreneurial eyes on PropTech. Here are my notes on a few of the awesome presentations and talks at the event on December 4, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland.…
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Making the World’s Longest Undersea Railway Tunnel Possible with BIM
Finland and Estonia are Baltic sea neighbors separated by the Gulf of Finland. Over eight million travelers and 1.2 million cars travel between Helsinki and Tallinn every year by boat. However, a consortium of companies is now planning to build the Finest railway tunnel between the two countries. The vision of such a tunnel has…
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SkenarioLabs Uses AI for Property Benchmarking
AI continues to be a hot topic across industries. The PropTech startup SkenarioLabs has a data analytics solution that utilizes AI. The results have been successful from the perspective of property owners: reliable technical surveys that contribute to making smart investment decisions. While automatic valuation is not a recent invention for property owners and investors,…
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Toward Increased Citizen Engagement in Urban Planning
Digitalization creates new opportunities for citizen engagement in urban planning. I gave a short presentation on the topic at the Digitalization in Urban Planning event in Helsinki. The event was organized by CHAOS Architects, a tech company. Its AI cloud platform allows citizens to share ideas about their city and co-create it with their community.…
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eRent: Construction Efficiency Using Principles of the Sharing Economy
eRent has developed a digital equipment management portal for construction equipment. At the very heart of the concept lies the resource efficiency that can be achieved using principles of the sharing economy. Olli Aaltonen, CEO of eRent Solutions, is confident about the platform his company has created: “Besides offering a digital solution to a rather…
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eRent: Construction Efficiency Using Principles of the Sharing Economy
eRent has developed a digital equipment management portal for construction equipment. At the very heart of the concept lies the resource efficiency that can be achieved using principles of the sharing economy. Olli Aaltonen, CEO of eRent Solutions, is confident about the platform his company has created: “Besides offering a digital solution to a rather…
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City Development with Interactive 3D Models
The Finnish city of Hyvinkää has developed a unique internet service for collaborative 3D city planning. It gives real estate owners, investors, developers, designers, authorities, and citizens easy-to-use tools to publish their 3D plans and ideas for the built city environment. Participants can comment on the 3D plans directly in the city model. The 3D…
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The Winning Teams at the AEC Hackathon Helsinki
The AEC Hackathon on September 7-9, 2018, was a part of Housing Fair Finland’s City Living event. The winning hack teams presented three quite different solutions to the hackathon challenges. The hackathon took place in a school building constructed in 1878 that the current owner, Kojamo, is developing into a hotel. The three hackathon challenges…