METACITIES

The CYENS Center of Excellence is proud to announce the awarding of a Horizon Europe Program, under the Excellence Hubs call, the METACITIES!

With a total budget of EUR 5 million, METACITIES (MetaCities Excellence Hub in South-Eastern Europe) brings together three place-based innovation ecosystems in Cyprus, Greece and Bulgaria partner together to create an Excellence Hub for Future Cities and Regions in Southeast Europe (Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, SmartCities, Metaverse).

Over the next four years, METACITIES will showcase and promote advanced digital technologies, like Next Generation Networks (5G/6G), Digital Twins of future cities, Metaverse eXtended Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and Big Data Analytics through cross-border collaboration focusing on innovation and engaging all different categories of actors of the Quadruple Helix (academic, business, public authorities and societal actors). This will enable stakeholders to assess the effects of any changes before investments and implementations actually occur

Along with the Cypriot and European partners, METACITIES will define long-term R&I strategies and implementation guidelines on digital twins and metaverse technologies, will identify reference ICT architectures of upcoming technologies and infrastructures required to support METACITIES, identify an Integrated Business Process framework and Business Models for Metacities, and strengthen local ecosystems to accelerate digital transformation of cities and regions so that they become attractive to new businesses and investments.

By the end of the project METACITIES will demonstrate the researched solutions using pilots drawn from three domains, smart mobility (GR), green city (BG) and urban planning (CY). Each one of them will produce the specifications of their digital twins and how they can be implemented. These Pilots will be executed and tested in the 5G infrastructures that are offered by METACITIES partners and will be validated by all actors of the project.

The METACITIES project is expected to act in a complimentary way to the DiGiNN Digital Innovation Hub, CYENS is a co-coordinator.

Stay tuned for more upcoming exciting activities! If you are interested in the use of emerging technologies, contact us for further information and the opportunity to collaborate with us in the framework of this project and other similar initiatives!