Pilot project for local weather information 2025–2026

In late 2025, the City of Espoo will pilot a new system that provides real-time traffic weather information for pedestrians and cyclists. The pilot utilises sensors and weather stations to produce information on local conditions, such as the weather and how slippery the roads are. The aim of the pilot is to make roads safer and more comfortable to use for pedestrians and cyclists, especially during the varying weather conditions of autumn and winter. The pilot is carried out in cooperation with Mellenium Oy and Teede Tehnokeskus.

The Sustainable Future Districts Pilot Program develops and tests new ideas to foster sustainable mobility and biodiverse urban environments. The program offers companies opportunities to network and co-develop solutions for a more sustainable urban environment.  Selected solutions will be tested in real-life settings, with pilots carried out in Espoo’s neighbourhoods and their impacts monitored collaboratively. 

Further information: Sustainable Future Districts Pilot Program

The pilot is part of the Sustainable Future Districts Pilot Program, which receives funding from the Sustainable Future Districts project. The aim of the project is to offer experimental and development environments for climate-neutral and sustainable urban solutions and green transition business and research in Espoo. The project is co-financed by the EU and will continue until 31 March 2026.

The pilot will be carried out during the winter season 2025–2026.

Please send fault reports and development proposals directly to the service provider at info@mellenium.fi.

Weather stations and small road sensors made by Teede Tehnokeskus measure the humidity and the temperature of the air and the road. This information is used to determine the dew point, which Teede Tehnokeskus's road weather model combines with publicly available weather data to generate an hourly local forecast of road conditions. The forecast is distributed to Mellenium Oy’s system via the REST interface.

Mellenium publishes a daily overview of cycling conditions at the measuring points on Facebook and a more accurate forecast for the next 24 hours on a separate website. The information on the website is updated once an hour.

The weather sensors are small IoT devices with their own battery and solar cell that allow them to operate independently without an external power supply for up to three years. The collected data is transmitted via an NB-IoT network to a back-end system. The road sensors are small and affordable, which allows the creation of dense meteorological measurement networks that were previously too costly to build. The same kind of devices are used also used in other places, such as Estonia’s main roads and largest cities.

More information is available on the Pilot Program’s website, which also collects news articles about the pilot. For more information from the City of Espoo, please contact Tessa Armour, Senior Specialist in Sustainable Urban Development, who coordinates the pilot on the city’s behalf tessa.armour@espoo.fi.

The pilot is used to test a new technology and service. In other words, the functionality, benefits and costs of the service are being tested before it is ready for commercial and large-scale use. The pilot is used to collect practical experiences and to make sure that the service is reliable, useful and cost-effective. Feedback from residents may affect whether the service remains in use in the City of Espoo.

The pilot sites were selected in cooperation with the parties carrying out the pilot, the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development and maintenance experts from the Public Works Department. Three of the sites are on routes that connect to enhanced winter maintenance routes. Two sites on an enhanced maintenance route act as a point of reference. Enhanced winter maintenance routes are swept and salted daily before commuting traffic begins. As such, they ought to be in good cycling condition every day. However, people are nonetheless known to have some uncertainties regarding the conditions of swept and salted routes during cold and snowy weather. Furthermore, spreading the pilot locations across several different winter maintenance areas allows data to be collected from various locations. Locations with large amounts of cycling traffic in winter were emphasised when selecting the pilot locations.

Espoo is committed to aiming for carbon neutrality by 2030. To achieve this goal, transport emissions must be reduced. One of the many methods for reducing emissions is to increase the share of walking and cycling in traffic. Commuting is a recurring everyday event, and reducing its emissions is therefore very impactful.