Data holds immense potential for our cities, yet converting it into actionable intelligence remains a primary challenge.

Organized by the Comune di Milano and the Open Geospatial Consortium, this session deconstructed this issue by first showcasing successful data-driven approaches from Milan, Medina, and Ferrara, and then by exploring foundational policies and tools, including international standards and the Digital Building Permit. A look into the FOCAL project demonstrated how climate data could be made actionable for planners. The session culminated in a high-level panel where officials from Italy and Saudi Arabia articulated their pressing needs and vision for sustainable urban management.

The two-hour session was organized into three parts:

Part 1: Global Smart Cities Showcase – Milan, Medina, and Ferrara

• Presentation by the Comune di Milano (Mr. Marco Mazziaotti) presented an overview of city-level initiatives, digital, smart city, and sustainability-related EU projects, select key achievements, lessons learned, and future needs.
• Presentation by the City of Medina (Eng. Fahad Alfattani) showcased smart city dashboards, key achievements, lessons learned, and future needs.
• Presentation on behalf of the City of Ferrara (Mr. Piergiorgio Cipriano, Deda Next) shared lessons learned in European projects (USAGE and AIR-BREAK).

Part 2: The Essential Frameworks – Standardisation and Digitalisation in Practice

• Presentation by the Building Digital Twin Association (Dr. Eduard Loscos) addressed current European and international standardisation perspectives and regulations of the near future.
• Presentation by the Open Geospatial Consortium (Dr. Francesca Noardo) (OGC + EUnet4DBPs) outlined an unblocking step towards digitalisation through the Digital Building Permit and related experiences.

Part 3: Overcoming Barriers to Impact

• The FOCAL project – A Call to Action (Dr. Eric Samakinwa, Climate Service Center Germany).
• Panel discussion (moderated by Mr. Muthu Kumar, OGC) invited representatives from the Cities of Milan, Medina, Ferrara, and Voghera — Mr. Marco Mazziaotti, Eng. Fahad Alfattani, Mr. Piergiorgio Cipriano, and Ms. Gloria Chindamo — to address:
  • (A) Key barriers to using advanced city data effectively
  • (B) Trust, governance, and ownership of city data
  • (C) Short-term steps cities could take to improve data use