Based on innovative concept and sustainability criteria, a new service called Think Sustainably (Valitse vastuullisemmin) was designed and developed under myhelsinki.fi. It lets users select businesses and service providers that are committed to operating sustainably. It also includes a journey planner feature that enables choosing emission-free transportation options to the wide variety of experiences on offer in the city. The route planner provides CO2 emissions in grams per person per trip.
The new service is based on sustainability criteria developed by independent think tank Demos Helsinki together with local experts. When local businesses and service providers like restaurants, cafés, shops, accommodation providers as well as experience services meet the criteria, they can be included in the service. The criteria highlight ecological sustainability and the fight against climate change, while also taking into consideration other aspects of ecological and social sustainability.
The technical solution brings together the criteria and open location and event data, as well as HSL’s journey planner API. The result is a service that provides residents, visitors and business owners with practical tools to make more sustainable choices and business decisions. The MyHelsinki Open API is an open interface of three databases maintained by Helsinki Marketing. The up-to-date and standardized data, edited by our content experts, ensures consistency in communicating Helsinki’s services to locals and visitors.
The HSL journey planner API offers data regarding routing, geocoding, map data and vehicle locations. The journey planner feature created for the Think Sustainably service enables users to choose the transportation option with the lowest carbon footprint. In the future, we aim to bring the sustainability data in the Think Sustainably service as a part of MyHelsinki API data to serve a wider audience of software developers and commercial partners locally and internationally.
