At an upcoming Joint Stakeholder Forum Meeting, the communities of the European Data Space for Smart Communities (DS4SSCC) and the Local Digital Twins for Smart and Sustainable Communities (LDT4SSC) project come together to exchange insights, collaborate, and drive innovation.
📅 22 April 2026
⏰ 10:00–12:00 CET
The Citiverse is a new concept that represents a next-level digital space where citizens, communities, and city officials can interact in a virtual way by using AR/VR technology: It aims to let users explore planned urban projects before they are built, participate in virtual town halls, or test solutions to reduce traffic and pollution - all from a smartphone, tablet, or computer. Building on the European smart communities’ data infrastructure, some cities are already testing what this concept means in practice.
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.
Involving citizens in urban planning also implies adapting the city to different needs: Especially people with disabilities often face barriers when trying to participate in urban life. Through a Universal Design methodology and by working with local associations, the project European Citiverses Uniting for Inclusiveness allows families with children in wheelchairs to virtually test sites in the Swedish city of Gothenburg for accessibility, removing the anxiety of the unknown.
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 this link.
The 3D-4CH Online Competence Centre is hosting a Stakeholder Forum on the use of AI-driven 3D digital twins for Europe’s cultural heritage, as one of the key industry sectors identified by the Apply AI Strategy to boost adoption of AI and EU technology. The event will provide insights into EU policy priorities and showcase innovative approaches to cultural heritage data.
The Stakeholder Engagement Facility (SEF) of the European Space Agency (ESA) supports the uptake of Earth Observation data by expanding engagement with a diverse range of stakeholder and end-user communities.
Earth Observation (EO) data includes information about the Earth’s surface, waters and atmosphere that can be collected via ground-based, airborne or satellite remote sensing platforms. EO data serves a very wide range of applications and industries, including: environmental protection, energy, managing urban areas, regional and local planning, agriculture, transport, climate change, sustainable development, tourism – and more.
To help cities address urban challenges such as urban heat, land use or spatial planning using EO data, the ESA SEF invites you to join the Urban EO deep dive. This programme provides local administrations that have limited experience with observation data with a guided approach to harnessing EO solutions, through a step-by-step process:
First, SEF helps cities assess their priorities, state of the art and resources related to EO data. Then, a targeted use case is developed in close coordination with city teams and adapted to local needs. Finally, cities work in a hands-on session to produce concrete outputs based on the EO solutions.
Interested cities can read more in this document and contact the ESA SEF team at this link or directly via esa-sef@evenflow.eu.
This webinar, held as part of the ITU Digital Transformation Dialogues and co-organised by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the Education and Capacity Building Working Group of the Living-in.EU initiative, introduced the citiverse concept to city administrations, public authorities, and digital innovation stakeholders, including the Living-in.EU community.
To further support consortium building and partner discovery, we invite you to register for the LDT4SSC Matchmaking Event linked to the Second Round of Open Calls:
The FinEst Centre for Smart Cities is inviting you to the Smart City Exchange Forum 2026 on March 12, 2026: The event will take place in hybrid mode, at the PROTO Invention Factory in Tallinn or online.
The 2026 Living-in.EU Digital Assembly will take place on 15 April 2026 (9:30-12:30) in Sofia (Bulgaria), back-to-back with the Eurocities Digital Forum: Register now and save your place for the Assembly at this page!
The Living-in.EU Digital Assembly is the political advisory body of the Living-in.EU network. It is co-chaired by Lluïsa Moret Sabidó, Mayor of Sant Boi de Llobregat, and Ivan Goychev, Deputy Mayor for Digitalisation and Information Systems of Sofia Municipality. This annual flagship event brings together mayors, regional leaders and key stakeholders to debate the political priorities of the network and to provide strategic orientation in support of the twin green and digital transformation of EU cities and communities.
The 2026 edition will take place under the theme “Key Technologies for Future-Proof Cities: from data spaces to digital twins”. It will explore the data-driven journey of a city, regardless of its size: from identifying its needs and challenges, through mapping dependencies for federated data spaces, to developing and using data platforms and digital twins in urban planning.
The event will include two parts - a political debate and a practical session:
| 9:30-9:45 |
Welcome from the Co-Chairs of the Living-in.EU Digital Assembly
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| 9:45-10:00 | Keynote speech |
| 10:00-11:00 |
Political debate: "Key technologies for future-proof cities" The political debate will focus on how to identify the needs and challenges that cities and regions are facing and the right technology for addressing those needs. Following a welcome by the co-Chairs of the Assembly and a keynote speech, local leaders will explore how to link the development of digital solutions to the political priorities of the city. They will discuss topics such as data governance, prioritising investments, strategies to identify the most effective solutions, while ensuring the digital rights of citizens. Moderator: André Sobczak, Eurocities |
| 11:00-11:30 | Coffee Break |
| 11:30-12:30 |
Panel discussion: "Best practices from cities on digital twins for climate resilience" As cities are working to prepare for and adapt to climate change, they are increasingly using digital twins as part of their climate resilience strategies: Virtual models of the city based on real-time data allow local governments to simulate climate impact and test strategies to adapt to heatwaves and floods, or to manage energy grids, green spaces and low emission zones. However, digital twins rely on high-quality data, which requires collaboration from a complex network of stakeholders. In this session, experts from cities will share examples on implementing data platforms, data spaces and digital twins to become more resilient to climate change, as an overarching challenge that covers environmental, mobility, and social aspects. Following an introduction to the EU digital twins landscape and the digital maturity of local administration, cities will present their use cases about digital twins for climate adaptation. |
The agenda will be updated on a regular basis as more information is confirmed.
The 2026 Living-in.EU Digital Assembly will take place on 15 April 2026 (9:30-12:30) in Sofia (Bulgaria)!
The LDT4SSC project aims to strengthen the digital capabilities of urban areas and create a federated European ecosystem of LDT-enabled communities. This new round of calls will support innovative pilot projects across three complementary Work Strands, covering the full LDT lifecycle:
Work Strand 1 (WS1): Inter-connection of existing Local Digital Twins to form a European-scale network.
Work Strand 2 (WS2): Creation of new Local Digital Twins based on shared challenges across cities and communities.
Work Strand 3 (WS3): Adding advanced AI-based capabilities and innovative open-source components to the EU LDT Toolbox.
These pilots will be led by partnerships of cities, communities, businesses, researchers and other stakeholders working together on real-world challenges.
📅 Timeline:
💵 Funding:
✅ Eligible applicants:
➡️ Find out more about the calls and how to apply here and register for a dedicated info session on 12 February here!
