In a recent Living-in.EU signatory event, the first four EU-funded projects developing CitiVerse applications shared their progress after one year: 3DxVERSE, European Citiverses Uniting for Inclusiveness, SENSE, and x-CITE. Project representatives provided an overview of the projects' latest developments and showcased four pilot uses cases: Almelo (Netherlands), Gothenburg (Sweden), Kiel (Germany) and Flanders (Belgium).
Cities often face rising energy demands, but lack data for a successful climate adaptation of urban neighbourhoods. The 3DxVERSE project aims to address this problem by combining Digital Twin technology, participatory democracy and real-time data. By mapping energy systems in 3D, residents of the Dutch city Almelo are able to co-design a positive energy district and hydrogen-powered homes, making their communities more future-proof and sustainable.
How can digital technologies help cities become more inclusive? The European Citiverses Uniting for Inclusiveness project explores this question through Universal Design, digital twins and AI. In Gothenburg, the project is developing AccessCity, a prototype that allows people to explore places virtually before visiting them. By making urban environments easier to understand and providing information that helps people prepare for different situations, the project explores how digital twins can help lower barriers to participation in urban life.
The virtualisation of the city does not only make the present more accessible, but also the past: the German city of Kiel is benefiting from the SENSE project by using augmented reality to overlay the historical city landscape onto the current one. Through a combination of interactive 3D models, digital city tours via smartphones, this collaboration between experts in digital transformation and local tourism allows locals and tourists to see the city as it once was, keeping history alive in a modern setting.
The Citiverse allows city residents to explore multiple areas of their community at the same time, such as mobility or urban climate, and to have a say in making it more liveable: thanks to the x-CITE project, residents in Flanders can rely on extended reality and AI-powered Digital Twins to visualise future traffic and noise scenarios: This allows them to grasp the real impact of planning decisions on their surroundings.
The CitiVerse aims to help European cities become more inclusive, by improving residents' quality of life, and setting standards for innovative and responsible digital urban development. It also addresses key challenges that cities are facing: How to make digital services more interoperable, how to close data gaps and ensure citizens’ digital rights?
Interested in finding out more? All the material, slides and the recording are available at living-in.EU
