Track: Enabling Technologies

The event means to present the MCE Community (formerly Major Cities of Europe) as a European network of cities and regions, fostering cooperation, exchanging experience and supporting innovation and digital transformation of local authorities and their services to citizens.
During the event the representatives of the MCE Community will illustrate the network main activities and some of the members' experiences will be introduced.

The COD is a sovereign AI platform designed to help cities, metropolitan authorities, and public organizations engage citizens at scale while transforming citizen feedback into actionable policy insights. By combining conversational AI, semantic analysis, and collective intelligence methodologies, COD enables personalized, two-way dialogues with residents based on their interests, concerns, and local priorities.

One year after presenting a shared European CitiVerse vision at SCEWC 25, the four EU co-funded projects return to showcase real results from pilot cities across Europe. Through live demonstrations, practical use cases and lessons learned, the session explores how immersive digital infrastructure can create public value for citizens, cities and regions.

As cities move from pilot projects to city‑wide smart water deployments, many discover that proprietary connectivity and data models lock them into single vendors and constrain innovation. This panel will bring together a city/utility leader, meter and platform vendors, and the Open Mobile Alliance to discuss how standards‑based connectivity can unlock scalable, future‑proof water management.

An open exchange of ideas on how cities can become more liveable, resilient and inclusive. Through informal conversations with practitioners and innovators from different sectors, this session explores emerging approaches to urban challenges, from mobility and public space to digital services and citizen participation. Format and speakers to be announced.

Connecting AI and sustainability can help create greener, more livable cities, but scaling impact responsibly remains a challenge. The session explores how cities can use AI sustainably and equitably by addressing topics such as governance, partnerships, business models, data, carbon footprint, and accountability, while identifying the enabling conditions needed to build resilient, carbon-neutral and inclusive cities by 2030.

Digital tools are fundamentally changing how cities conceive, deliver, and operate the built environment. What was once a fragmented process is evolving into a more connected, intelligent, and data-driven ecosystem, where design, construction, and operations are increasingly linked across the full lifecycle. This session examines how technologies such as BIM, digital twins, advanced simulation, and automation are transforming the way urban assets are planned, delivered, and managed, opening new possibilities for efficiency, coordination, and performance. In doing so, it reflects on how buildtech is contributing to a more sustainable, resilient, and future-ready urban environment.

The way cities design, build and manage their built environment has changed forever. Digital tools are driving efficiency, reducing waste and unlocking new levels of coordination across the entire development lifecycle

The conversation explores the intersection of efficiency, citizen experience and societal impact by examining how technological innovation is helping governments become more agile, systematic, and responsive. Highlighting new opportunities for automation, streamlined workflows, reduced operational burdens, and stronger coordination across departments, the session will consider how these shifts are reshaping the way public administrations operate and deliver services. Building on this, practical applications and key challenges can be identified and examined to inform future action.

Artificial intelligence is becoming a defining force in the evolution of smart cities, reshaping how urban environments are understood, managed, and experienced. As AI moves from experimentation to large-scale implementation, cities are entering a new phase of transformation driven by data, automation, and predictive capabilities. Beyond efficiency and optimization, AI is also redefining the relationship between technology, governance, and society, raising important questions around trust, inclusion, transparency, and public value. This session explores how to harness AI not only to improve urban performance, but to build more resilient, sustainable, and human-centered futures.

Reliable, high-capacity connectivity is now a critical foundation for smarter urban services, real-time data use, and more connected public infrastructure. This roundtable discusses where cities stand in the deployment of IoT, specifically 5G, Wi-Fi 6, and smart networks, while considering the coverage, integration, and performance challenges that still need to be addressed to create digital infrastructure that is resilient, dependable, and prepared for future demands.

Where do cities actually stand on 5G, Wi-Fi 6 and smart networks? An honest assessment of current deployment and the connectivity gaps that still need solving.

AI is moving beyond generating insights or supporting decisions, executing tasks, and interacting with complex environments with increasing autonomy. This session inquiries into what that shift means in practice, examining examples of how agentic AI systems are already being deployed across real-world settings and what their growing capabilities could mean for cities, institutions, and urban services. From autonomous systems, algorithms, LLMs, VLMs, to emerging forms of machine reasoning, the conversation will consider both the opportunities and the implications of AI that does not only assist but increasingly acts.

From algorithms that suggest to systems that decide and execute. What autonomous AI agents are already doing in the real world, and what it means for cities.