IoT-TICKET, Barcelona
Open City Innovation Engine Selected as World Smart City Awards Finalist
Open City Innovation Engine, built on the IoT-TICKET platform, has been selected as one of four finalists in the Enabling Technologies category of the World Smart City Awards 2026.
The international competition received a record 533 submissions from 68 countries. The concept is based on a simple idea: instead of building digital city services from scratch, cities can use AI to adapt existing applications to their local needs.
Open City Innovation Engine has been named a finalist in one of the world’s leading smart city competitions. The World Smart City Awards take place as part of Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona on 3–5 November 2026. The Enabling Technologies category recognises innovative technological solutions that help cities improve their services.
Open City Innovation Engine is built on IoT-TICKET, the IoT and AI platform used in both industrial and smart city environments. The platform connects existing information systems, sensors and other data sources, providing tools for data analysis, visualisation and application development.
Open City Innovation Engine takes these capabilities further. Rather than developing the same digital services repeatedly, cities can use AI to adapt applications already built on IoT-TICKET to their own needs. This makes it possible to reuse existing development work and bring new services into operation faster.
From an Existing Application to a New City’s Needs
One example is Traffic Scout, a traffic analytics application developed on the IoT-TICKET platform. It helps cities monitor traffic flows, forecast traffic patterns and assess the impact of changes to traffic arrangements.
Traffic Scout can use a city’s existing traffic counters, cameras and other data sources. When introduced in a new city, the application can be connected to local data sources, while its dashboards and features can be adapted with AI to meet local requirements.
The same approach can be applied to other smart city applications, including parking management, visitor flow analysis, safety monitoring and stormwater management. IoT-TICKET provides the common technological foundation for developing and running these applications across different cities.
Tampere and Vaasa Show What Is Possible
Open City Innovation Engine builds on years of collaboration between IoT-TICKET and Finnish cities, particularly Tampere and Vaasa.
In Tampere, IoT-TICKET is used to bring together and analyse data from different sources and forecast future developments. Applications include traffic and mobility flow analytics and Tampere Pulssi, a service that forecasts visitor numbers in the city. These insights help with event planning, city services and decision-making by local businesses.
In Vaasa, IoT-TICKET is used to analyse traffic data and related CO₂ emissions, as well as to develop new digital city services.
In 2023, the City of Tampere won the same Enabling Technologies category with a solution that used IoT-TICKET and AI to turn city data into practical services.
The 2026 finalist, Open City Innovation Engine, represents the next stage of this development. The aim is to make applications developed in Tampere and other cities available more widely, allowing them to be adapted with AI and introduced in new cities around the world.
“Why should every city develop the same digital services from scratch? With AI, we can adapt existing, proven applications to the needs of new cities. This speeds up development and helps cities get more value from their previous technology investments. Being selected as a finalist is also a great recognition of years of collaboration with our customers and partners. Tampere, in particular, has been a pioneer in this work,” says Jari Kuusisto, Director, Smart City Business at IoT-TICKET.
IoT-TICKET Provides a Foundation for International Growth
IoT-TICKET is already used in several Finnish cities, and IoT-TICKET is working with Telia in Sweden. As a commercial software platform, IoT-TICKET can also be offered by Wapice’s partners and used to develop their own applications and services.
Open City Innovation Engine creates new opportunities for this partner ecosystem. By adapting existing applications to local requirements, partners can build services for their own markets without starting development from scratch. IoT-TICKET is actively seeking new partnerships and business opportunities, particularly across Europe.
AI Makes Application Development Faster and More Flexible
IoT-TICKET has long provided low-code and no-code tools that allow users to build new data dashboards in minutes. AI now introduces further possibilities, enabling dashboards to be created and adapted in seconds.
This makes it easier to present the same city data in different ways for different users. Urban planners, maintenance professionals, local businesses and visitors may all need different information, even when it comes from the same underlying data sources.
“The most important question in smart city development is not how much data a city has, but how that data can make a real difference to people’s lives. AI allows us to make the same information available to more people in ways that are relevant to their individual needs. This opens up entirely new opportunities for developing city services,” Kuusisto continues.
Winners Announced on 4 November
The winners of the World Smart City Awards 2026 will be announced in Barcelona on 4 November. IoT-TICKET will showcase Open City Innovation Engine together with the City of Tampere at Smart City Expo World Congress, at the European Twinning & CitiVerse Plaza pavilion.
Further information
Jari Kuusisto
Director, Smart City Business
+358 44 553 3512
jari.kuusisto@wapice.com
Explore the solutions
Open City Innovation Engine:
https://iot-ticket.com/open-city-innovation-engine/
Traffic Scout:
https://iot-ticket.com/traffic_scout/
World Smart City Awards 2026 finalists:
https://www.smartcityexpo.com/world-smart-city-awards-finalists/
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