SILLAN wins €10,000 at the City Resilience Hack in Tallinn

On 24–25 September, the SILLAN team took part in the City Resilience Hack in Tallinn, organised by the City of Tallinn and Tehnopol as part of Estonian Defence Week. We worked on the challenge "Resilient critical systems and operational response" and on the case presented by the cities of Dnipro and Helsinki.

Over more than 30 hours, we worked to show the cities that vehicle-based bridge monitoring is ready to move from research into real pilots. SILLAN was selected as one of seven winning teams and awarded €10,000 to develop the solution further, at a point when we thought we were already out of the competition.

The prize matters, but the conversations shaped us more. Mentors and city teams gave us direct feedback on how we would implement a pilot and on our business model. That feedback has shaped our strategy since: focus on delivering pilots that bridge owners can actually use.

Bridges are critical links for any city, and in a crisis, knowing quickly which ones are safe matters. SILLAN uses vehicles that already drive the city's routes, so bridge condition can be checked continuously without new installations on every structure.

Following the hack, we will work with Dnipro and Helsinki to run pilot tests and further validate the technology. The event also opened a separate conversation with the City of Tallinn.

Thank you to our mentors for their advice on our pilot plan and business model, to the organisers at the City of Tallinn and Tehnopol, and congratulations to the other winning teams.