Pillar 2 – Connecting Cities with the Virtual and Real Worlds
Pillar 2 – Connecting Cities with the Virtual and Real Worlds translates strategic vision into real-world experimentation. It empowers cities to lead the development of AI-powered virtual worlds by integrating emerging technologies, identifying high-impact use cases, and providing tools and environments for hands-on innovation.
Through five practical tracks, this pillar enables urban stakeholders to explore, test, and apply virtual world solutions—bridging the gap between ambition and implementation, and helping shape the citiverse from the ground up.
Track 7
This track aims to explore the transformative potential of emerging technologies, such as AR, VR, digital twins and AI within the context of virtual worlds. It focuses on their application and adoption in cities, aiming to uncover innovative solutions for cities. By staying current on technological developments, this track serves as a dynamic resource for providing current insights into the technologies propelling the evolution of virtual worlds including citiverse. Moreover, it serves as a platform to highlight both the challenges and opportunities intrinsic to these technologies as they intersect with the expanding realm of the virtual worlds.
Track 8
This track focuses on the collection and curation of new use cases pertaining to virtual worlds, including the adoption of digital technologies, such as AI, VR, AR, digital twin in cities. The track highlights the expected opportunities, risks, and maturity/horizon associated with the use cases identified.
Track 2
This track focuses explicitly on security and trust in the citiverse and virtual worlds. As the virtual worlds involving, a range of security and trust issues emerge. Addressing these concerns is critical to fostering a safe and reliable virtual worlds and citiverse.
Track 16
As cities, communities, and people worldwide explore AI-supported virtual worlds, realizing the Citiverse’s potential for the common good will require interoperability across multiple dimensions: cultural, organizational, and legal, as well as technical and semantic.
This track addresses these challenges from a local and regional authority perspective, while supporting broader global collaboration and knowledge exchange. It is grounded in the proven multi-layered European Interoperability Framework for Smart Cities and Communities (EIF4SCC) and aims to translate its principles into practical insights that can inform trustworthy Citiverse ecosystem development across different contexts and regions.
The cultural, organizational, and legal dimensions for meaningful and sustainable digital public infrastructure will be explored in equal depth alongside the technical and semantic, which provide a basis for further development of the established foundation of the Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs, as defined in Recommendation ITU-T Y.4505 “Minimal interoperability mechanisms for smart and sustainable cities and communities”) framework.
This track is coordinated by Open & Agile Smart Cities and Communities (OASC) and the Municipality of Rotterdam, and informed by dedicated preparatory work within the OASC Task Force on the Interoperable Citiverse.
Track 9
This track creates a sandbox environment. This controlled space will facilitate the testing and selection of secure, interoperable, and innovative technologies related to virtual worlds in the urban context. By providing a safe space for experimentation, the sandbox expedites the adoption of cutting-edge solutions in real-world urban settings. There are 2 phases in this track: Phase I – Sandbox Experiment Facility Concept Formulation and Phase II – Sandbox Experiment Facility Implementation Track.
Track 17
This is the action-oriented track of the Global Initiative on AI and Virtual Worlds, dedicated to showcasing and scaling real-world projects driven by cities, communities, and organizations. This track highlights how immersive technologies and AI are being implemented to transform public services, urban spaces, education, mobility, cultural heritage, and citizen engagement. It provides a global stage for pilots, prototypes, and policies that are already delivering measurable impact. By focusing on local implementation and global learning, Citiverse on the Ground ensures that innovation does not remain abstract — it becomes tangible, inclusive, and aligned with the priorities of people and places.