CitiVerse: Envisioning Inclusive, Sustainable, and People-Centered Cities

Exploring the transformative potential of CityVerse at the World Summit on the Information Society

At the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a significant session was held to discuss the emerging concept of “CityVerse,” a term coined to describe the integration of physical urban environments with virtual worlds. The session, co-organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the World’s Smart Sustainable Cities Organisation (WIGO), was moderated by Kamelia Kemileva and aimed to envision cities that are inclusive, sustainable, and focused on the needs of their inhabitants.

The CityVerse concept was recognized for its potential to revolutionize urban economies, environments, social structures, and cultural landscapes. Experts agreed that technology plays a crucial role in enhancing decision-making processes and improving the quality of life for city residents. Dr. Sung Jin Park from South Korea outlined four preconditions for the successful establishment of CityVerse: the creation of digital twins for visual representation, the integration of past and present data, the development of robust governance structures, and the creation of relevant content, applications, and services.

Accessibility and inclusivity within CityVerse were highlighted as critical considerations. Professor Anna Matamala stressed the importance of designing these virtual worlds with accessibility in mind from the start, advocating for diverse representation and a range of communication options to cater to different needs and preferences. The panel concurred that CityVerse should empower all individuals, including those with disabilities.

The session also addressed the challenges and opportunities associated with CityVerse. Concerns were raised about the potential for an excessive focus on technical perfection over meaningful applications and the risk of a generational technology gap that could impede the widespread adoption of CityVerse.

The gender gap in technology and CityVerse was acknowledged, with calls to bridge this divide and ensure equal participation. Jung-Sook Park pointed out the familiarity of younger generations with CityVerse systems and suggested that efforts should be made to extend this familiarity across all demographics.

Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh, the Mayor of Dhaka South City Corporation, shared concrete examples of Dhaka’s progress towards becoming a smarter city. Initiatives such as e-governance, e-procurement, and the digitalisation of services have led to a doubling of revenue without increasing taxes. These efforts have also fostered greater public confidence in municipal services.

Dr. Park provided insights into South Korea’s journey towards CityVerse, detailing the deployment of integrated city operation platforms, the development of city data hubs, and the launch of digital twin initiatives. However, she noted that many of the use cases in Korean cities remain exploratory rather than serving as robust reference models that could be replicated elsewhere.

The session concluded with a positive outlook on the future of CityVerse, recognizing its transformative potential for urban living. The panellists agreed on the necessity for proactive consolidation of CityVerse strategies to ensure that they remain people-centred and accessible to all. The discussions highlighted the importance of continuing to explore and develop CityVerse as a means of developing cities that are truly inclusive, sustainable, and focused on the well-being of their citizens.

Kamelia Kemileva:
Miss Park.

Sung Jin Park:
I hear you, yeah.

Kamelia Kemileva:
Okay, we were waiting for this and now we will start officially. So, you are with us, we have your name plates on the podium, so ask if you are here. So, thank you for joining. Okay, so, ladies and gentlemen, it’s always quite unusual, nonetheless, that we live through COVID, etc., that we have people, you know, just behind us in the sphere, you know, this is the technology, they are with us, but we don’t see them. So, welcome to all the participants in the room and online. Good afternoon, good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and good evening for those who are remotely in this part of the world. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the WSIS session on CityVerse, a new word that Cristina invented. You will tell us. On CityVerse, envisioning inclusive, sustainable, and people-centered cities, co-organized by ITU and the World’s Smart Sustainable Cities Organizations, WIGO, our partners. My name is Camelia Camilova from the Global Cities Hub Geneva, based here in Switzerland, in Geneva, and I’m honored to be your moderator for this WSIS session. Before we delve into the heart of our discussions, I would please ask you to take note of how the session will be run. So, all the questions from the audience will be taken during the questions and answers session, after all the presentations, as well as, obviously, remote participants can put their questions in the chat. So, to begin today’s webinar, Ms. Jung Suk-Bak, Secretary-General, again, of the World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization, Vigo, dear partners and quite important organization based in South Korea, will kindly offer your opening remarks. Please have the floor.

Jung-Sook Park:
Okay, thank you. Thank you very much for giving me a chance to have such a wonderful session together with you. And I would like to congratulate. We say 20 plus. So we are working on a very important issue related to smart city under the name of CityVerse. So this session is a kind of milestone, will be, with Krishna Reed, this kind of very important session as well. And also I would like to thank Geneva City Hub, Global City Hub, to have such a meaningful event together as a co-host. So I would like to thank our member, CityDACA-South. He is the mayor of DACA-South, Sheikh Falas Noor Tabrosh. Actually he got a first Seoul Smart City Prize of a leadership prize. So I’m so honored to have him with us. And also we have City Director of London as well, he is in the session. And also I extend my appreciation for our team and Geneva City Hub team. as well. So this year, as we dive deeper into the metaverse by placing focus on smart city, city-verse has become an established concept that interconnects virtual cities within a broader digital or virtual universe. And we can all be linked through a network or system of digital environments with its own unique characteristics and populations and functions as well. As you know, we had a really good conversation with Doreen this morning. As you know, AI has become a buzzy word for this year from the CES in Las Vegas. So through this kind of city-verse association or some collaboration, we have to focus on some principles or digital ID, digital twins, ethical issues as well. So as an international organization, WEGO, we would like to share our challenges or some achieved developed smart city project with metaverse mechanism as well. As you know, Seoul announced metaverse platform in a kind of official governance system two years ago. After that, we made a lot of advance and so I would like to encourage you to visit Seoul in October. We will host various kind of stakeholders gathering, name of smart life WE. And also, we welcome your application-related inclusive smart city through Metaverse as well. So, I would like to encourage you participating together because if we don’t discuss about this ethical one or digital idea or Metaverse, we will face some challenges in the near future. Okay, thank you very much.

Kamelia Kemileva:
I thank you very much, very warmly, and I take very seriously this invitation, and I’ll be coming to this big event in October, so my pleasure. Thank you for these insightful remarks. So, these remarks set the stage perfectly for the presentations that we have ahead. Next to me, also, and as you already introduced him, we have the big pleasure and the honor to have the mayor of Dhaka South City Corporation, Mr. Sheikh Faisal Noortaposh, who will provide keynote addresses. And just as a matter of introduction, as you have already introduced him, we are very honored to have you because you are a smart city doer, apparently, because you have won a lot of prizes, so the Vigo Prizes, but also the UN Habitat SDG Silver Certificate for SDGs. And during lunch, if I can leak this information, you told me that you’re working towards a gold certificate, so it was dangerous to sit next to me near lunch. With this introduction, please go ahead for your keynote remarks, and thank you for being with us.

Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh:
Thank you so much for your very pleasant introduction. The topic for discussion today is very interesting. As you all know, it’s called CityVerse, Envisioning Inclusive, Sustainable, and People-Centered Cities. The topic, the headline, I think means a lot and all the distinguished guests here can decipher that the words used are like inclusive and people-centered. Out of the three terms, two terms relate to people. So whatever we do, we are sitting here and we’re discussing our future and how to make the cities more sustainable, resilient. Our main focus is people. So when we think of smart technology innovation and making the city more smarter, we think of how that smartness or how that technology facilitates and assists the people, how the people become more smarter. I’ll give you one example. In Dhaka, we are a small city of 109 square kilometers, but we are a megacity of more than 10 million people. So when the international world considers us, we are amongst the megacities, but we are in a very small area of land. So the challenges are much higher or much bigger. When we think of, when we are planned of making our city smarter, our focus has been, the word smart, it doesn’t only relate to technology and innovation, it relates to people. How do we make our citizens, our residents, our dwellers, city dwellers, more smarter? So the focus of smartness is with the people, as it comes in this topic that I’ve related. So smartness is smart citizens, smart governance for city leadership, smart economy, how to raise the economy and how this smart innovation technology assists the economy to grow faster and grow better. And of course then the other issues of smart transportation, infrastructure and other services. So all these altogether make our city more smarter. And in that aspect, it’s not only impressing technology or innovation, whether that creates sustainability for the city. As we all know that as we are into the fourth industrial revolution of higher technology and innovation, the climate impact is putting us down. As I’m speaking today, four weeks back Dhaka city had a heat wave. We suffered heat wave. But as I’m speaking today, for the last two days, we had cyclones passing through the whole of the country and passing through Dhaka. So these are the challenges that we are facing, and it’s very real. Earlier, 10 years back, one could say that it’s not real. And some people also, as we know, that some people say that it’s fake, but it is actually real. So whatever outcome, whatever we want to do, it’s innovation, it’s technology, it’s smartness, ultimately it has to be for the residences, for the citizens, and it has to be sustainable, and it has to make the city more resilient to all these catastrophes, all these natural disasters, and sometimes human-made disasters as well. I can share a few examples to make our city more smart. We have introduced e-governance, we have introduced e-procurement, so we have digitalized and made it technology-centric so that all our procurement by the city government, city council, is through the online process. It’s completely transparent so that people have more confidence, and that has enhanced our revenue earning without increasing any tax or whatsoever. We didn’t have to increase any tax. We committed to the people that we are not going to increase any tax, but without increasing tax, through Felix’s facilitation and introducing smart technology and e-governance and e-procurement, we have raised the tax to twice-fold. I took office during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In 2023, our revenue earning doubled from what I started with. So, it shows, it manifests that if you can give confidence to the people and if you can bring the people together and the people get confidence in the system, in the government, in the municipality, they can contribute and they can see that their contribution gives effect to, impacts their lives. We have digitalized birth and death registration for all city dwellers. We have introduced marriage registration for all adults. We are using GIS application for land management. We have introduced e-revenue, so they pay the whole property tax. Everything is online, the trade license and all the services are online. For, as I mentioned, being resilient, we have established an emergency operation center for disaster management. As I mentioned, that there has been lots of climate impact in our country that we have been experiencing very recently. So, we monitor these natural disasters and manage these disasters through our emergency operation center, where people connect to us and engage and we use people at our, we have 75 wards, so we have used as volunteers in the wards to take part in the disaster recovery and management. And that has enhanced the relationship of people with the government, with the city government and that’s why we are getting results from the people. So I think that this is very important when we say that term city verse or we say that it’s inclusive, sustainable, and people centered. These are the experiences I think that we should exchange and we should have so that our vision and our mission would be to give more, make the people more smart so that their city is resilient, the city is sustainable, and we can all together be a more smart city. Thank you so much.

Kamelia Kemileva:
And thank you very much Mayor and we will be always looking for these concrete examples from residents and as your hands-on on them. Thank you and once again thank you for Vigo, precious partners for bringing such interesting speakers in Geneva. So with this now we have a fantastic lineup of panelists for this session and I am having two paragraphs to explain what is city verse but I will leave the pleasure to Christina because you’re one of the architects and instead of reading this I will just say an anecdote because I am as a former Swiss diplomat I was here 21 years ago when WSIS started and at this very time we have the first WSIS in 2003 here in this building and some diplomats as I was diplomat we were talking with diplomats some diplomats were asking but are you sure that information society is a priority issue? So we were having this kind of debates. Today you would not believe that. So Cristina

Cristina Bueti:
Thank you so much Kamelia maybe to add on your anecdote 20 years ago I was part of the WSIS team, actually, when I started working in the ITU. So the WSIS is very dear to my heart. And I think that as part of my presentation, I think that I believe that when we talk about Cityverse, and we look a bit at the future, recalling actually the wise words from the Honorable Mayor, is that we have to look at the importance of building a digital space which is made by people, for people. And that is really centric. It’s so important to ensure that, you know, when we look at new emerging technologies, for example, a new world, which can be really beyond our current imagination. So when we look at the metaverse, and yet, I wouldn’t dare to define the Cityverse, because I don’t think we are yet there. I think that probably it is more accurate to say that at this stage, we do have a series of metaverse platforms which are available. So we have many metaversees, although we are quite used to talk about metaverse. And well, the ITU focus group on metaverse defined actually metaverse as an integrative ecosystem of virtual worlds, offering immersive experiences to users that modify pre-existing and create new value from the economic, environmental, social, and cultural perspectives. So as you can see, encompassing the overall UN sustainability principles. And that’s really important. because when we look at the metaverse, metaverse probably a few years ago was being associated much more with the gaming industry, but is no longer a game, it is really a game changer, or it can be a game changer for the economy of cities, but also of countries. And there are estimates actually, that the metaverse can generate actually, five trillion, and that’s a quite huge number when we look at the possibility offered by a new technologies itself. But this is really something that has to be seen in the journey that every city, community, or district, is taking when it is embracing digital transformation. And let us be clear on the fact that when we look at the digital transformation, it is really a journey. It is something that has to be conceived in the holistic approach that every city has to make, looking at sustainable digital transformation, looking at how, for example, better use data to ensure that data are not only gathered, but are used and shared to maximize actually, the quality of living of their inhabitants. But it’s also, when we look at the metaverse, we see these new emerging technologies as an opportunity to enable real world and virtual and physical world integration. How these two worlds can interact with each other and what it will be our role as human being. So, can you envisage yourself, for example, in the metaverse? Maybe next year we are not gonna have this meeting here, but we are gonna have it in the metaverse, and we will remain only in our respective offices, and there will be a nice avatar representing us. And there are certainly some positive, there are some opportunities, but there are also some challenges. There are also some missing opportunity. Look how beautiful it is for a woman to be in a panel of all women. I think that’s extraordinary. In 20 years, it’s the first time in my life that it happens. And of course, we are delighted to have the honorable mayor with us, but the panel itself is made of women. So we are gonna miss the human touch, or there will be a possibility that maybe the technology will evolve so that it will create an opportunity also to extend our human being in the metaverse itself. Well, there are certainly some countries and some cities that are investing in the metaverse. That we consider them as the pioneering cities. For example, the Republic of Korea, and certainly Seoul is one of the cities that has created metaverse platforms. They are already in the first stage of the concrete implementation, and the finalization is expected to happen by 2026. So there is also already an interaction that is taking place with their inhabitants. Japan is also another country that is definitely considering metaverse as part of their digital transformation strategy. has taken metaverse as one of the key technologies that can push its economy, so looking it really at the economic aspects. And then definitely there are also many other cities here in Europe, but all these cities and I would say countries, they have something in common, that they are looking at the metaverse and cities, and hence maybe the intersection of these two concepts can be considered cityverse, in a way to build a people-centered cityverse, which will take and will put the community at the center, empowering people, where they will strive, and we will all strive, for digital equity, so making sure that we have giving access to technology in an equitable manner, how important it is, this concept of equity. Also when we look at the infrastructure, the responsible use of data, but also the availability of the infrastructure itself, in a world, in a city, in a country that is not connected, it’s very difficult to be able to provide public services, and of course to leverage the power of digital technologies like metaverse, and we want to make sure that the cityverse that we built is secure, is safe, take into consideration and respect actually the privacy of its inhabitants. And of course there has to be capacity building, are we all trained, are we all ready to work in the metaverse, to interact in the metaverse, to enjoy, but also how can we face this generation gap, and this is why the ITU that is very pleased actually to host the WSIS has been working with over 500 experts and has established a focus group on metaverse that so far has developed more than 30 deliverables covering different topics from policy, regulation, security, accessibility, sustainability, and this was done thanks to the efforts of the various experts that contributed to the work. So all credit to them. Anna, or Professor Anna, I should say, is actually one of those that is leading actually the work on accessibility. But we are also very pleased to work with the UN family and as part of the work that we are doing, we have launched the first UN Metaverse Thinkaton together with FAO, UNICC, and also IEA. The award ceremony of the three winning teams, so the students that will win this competition will be celebrated on the 14th of June a year in Geneva during the UN Virtual World Day, which is an event co-organized by ITU together with other 18 UN entities. And it’s really the first time that the UN family comes together actually to explore the challenges and opportunities to leverage metaverse also to achieve the sustainable development goals. So this is really a quick glimpse of the results achieved so far by the focus group and I encourage you to join our last meeting. And I also encourage you to participate remotely and physically to the UN Virtual World Day that will take place here in Geneva. And well, many thanks to Wigo for co-organizing this event. this session and also, of course, to our close partners, the Global City Hub, to Kamelia for moderating this session. And of course, if you have any questions, I’ll be happy to respond to any questions that you may have. Thank you.

Kamelia Kemileva:
Thank you very much, Cristina. And I’m already on the generation gap on the other side because I still hope to meet you in person next year and the year after. So with this, turning to Professor Dr. Anna Matala, you were partially introduced already. You work in Barcelona. And you will speak also about Cityverse, obviously. So try to give a… ChatGPT gave me a definition this morning of what is Cityverse. So… We might have received a different one because we all did this exercise. Exactly. So against this background, you have the floor. Thank you.

Anna Matamala:
Thank you very much. I would like to start by expressing my gratitude for the invitation. It’s really an honor to be here on this panel. May I have the clicker, please? Which is fantastic. It’s an accessible clicker. So easy. Because I just need to push here. And you will see why I made this comment. I would like to bring the perspective of academia to this panel and also the human factors perspective, the people-centered perspective. I lead a research group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The research group is Transmedia Catalonia and we work on accessibility, on accessible communication. We put the users at the center of our research and we keep an eye on technology. I’m not an engineer. I don’t have a technical background, but we work together with engineers. We keep an eye on technology and how technologies develop. to be there and make sure they are useful for the for the users. So we’ve been researching on digital and media accessibility for 20 years now. Our research, let me explain you very briefly, for the last years, the three last years, we are focusing on easy to understand language, we also deal with blockchain technologies, my colleague Estella here is working on that, sustainability linked to accessibility, video game accessibility and also immersive media. But we think that it’s important to go beyond research and move into society, into standards for instance. So we think knowledge transfer from academia to society is fundamental and we believe that standardization is one key aspect of this knowledge transfer. It’s not all about startups, spin-offs, licenses, those things are very important but standards are also central. So we’ve been involved in the fantastic ITU focus group on metaverse and my colleague at UAV, Professor Pilar Oredo, has been co-chairing a working group, working group eight, on sustainability, accessibility and inclusion. As Cristina was saying, we’ve worked very hard, we’ve learned a lot and we’ve published quite a few deliverables that are available on the web page of the focus group. Just to show some of the selected deliverables on accessibility that we’ve been working on, I listed requirements of accessible products and services in the metaverse, part one, system design, part two, user perspective, there is a document on accessibility for a sustainable metaverse, another one on guidance and how to build a metaverse for all and still another one on requirements for communication between human and ourselves. Navata languages in the metaverse. So there is this paper where it says that 25% of the people will spend at least one hour daily in the metaverse, let’s call it virtual worlds. We can use the term, I mean, the terminology is still not fully established for different activities, education, healthcare, shopping, et cetera. But who are we leaving behind? That’s a key question that I think we need to ask ourselves and actually at WSIS we are asking this question very, very often. But I would add another question here. Can we overcome the barriers of the physical world? So for me, it’s when I think of a virtual world from the perspective of the user, I think that as a user, sorry, I need to do different things. First of all, I need to access the virtual world. That’s the first step, that’s obvious. So you need connectivity. This is a very important topic that has been addressed in some sessions. But imagine you are a person with a disability. You may want your technologies to be interoperable with the system so that you can access easily this virtual world. So you may also want to access through different devices. You may want to use head-mounted displays, but maybe head-mounted displays do not work for you and want another device. Once, okay, you have the devices you can access, you need to authenticate yourself very often on certain systems. Is the authentication procedure accessible for everybody? Are we given the opportunity to use different formats, alternative formats? So you see how we could already encounter some barriers into the virtual world, into the metaverse, into the city-verse. Next. we may want to choose an avatar as we were saying maybe in a future meeting we all have our own avatars but we should be given the right of self-representation. I may want to be represented in a way or another so there needs to be a choice there and we need to take into account diversity. Okay I’ve accessed the virtual world first step I’ve created my avatar now I want to navigate and I want to have different navigational options depending on my abilities or my interests and also again this interoperability is very important and not only that I want to communicate I mean the whole point of our lives is communicating interacting with other people with services with products and so on so we need to cater for this accessible communication and not only that for accessible products and services and when I talk about accessible communication I refer to offering alternative so maybe we can have a written input converted into spoken words or maybe you have a neural input converted into a sign language or maybe you have a neural input converted into a written text a neural input in a source language for instance I may be speaking in Catalan and then maybe you want this input written in Korean or you know the combinations are multiple but I would like this virtual world to give me the opportunity to express myself in my language and have all these alternatives depending on my needs wishes or preferences. Accessible products and services apart from communication I was referring to the products and services so in these virtual worlds maybe we should see how we integrate different access services that already exist in our physical world I’m talking about subtitling or captioning for instance transcripts audio description of the visuals for those who cannot see. Audio subtitling, which is, imagine there are subtitles, you want them voiced if you cannot understand the source language and you cannot read them. Revoicing and so on. So, in my perspective, I think that the metaverse, the virtual worlds are both a challenge and an opportunity. I think we are at a stage in which we can still develop virtual worlds which are user-centric or people-centered, as the panel is called, that are multilingual. I think multilingualism is also a very important factor, that are born accessible. This is very important, that we don’t think about accessibility at the end. Once everything is developed, oh, now we need to create accessible content. Let’s take this into account from the very beginning. And multi-modal, so meaning that I may want the information orally, written, visual, so in all the different possible formats. On screen, some disclaimer that I will not read, acknowledging some sources of funding, and that would be my talk. And let me, since, yes, I’m well in time. I think I have a few seconds. Let me take this opportunity to invite you, as you go out, you go to the left, and you will see a lovely booth or stand that says AXSChat, is our knowledge transfer network, and you will get to talk to Karma and Estelle and myself, and get very lovely pens, where you have seeds for wildflowers. So I invite all of you to visit us, and we’ll explain a bit more. Thank you very much.

Kamelia Kemileva:
Thank you, Anna, and thank you, and yes, please take this invitation after the end of the panel. I am a bit disappointed. I thought you would invite us to Barcelona, because there is a big meeting on Cityverse and smart technologies there every year.

Cristina Bueti:
I didn’t say that, but because I took that for granted, you are all invited. Actually in November, there is the Smart City Exhibition. Last year we were there with AXSChat, and in November we’ll be there again. I was referring to this. I hope to see you all there.

Kamelia Kemileva:
I’m relieved. Thank you so much, and yes, invitation to Barcelona, but coming back to South Korea. So you’ve mentioned women, but you’ve also mentioned South Korea being on the edge of these technologies, which I am completely admirative of this, and the panel actually shows this tendency, because our last remote speaker is Dr. Sungjin Park, who is patiently waiting for her turn. So Dr. Park, you have 10 minutes, and then we will have a quick turn on questions at the end. So please have the floor.

Sung Jin Park:
Before that, can I share my screen? I changed a bit my presentation, so is it okay? Absolutely, do so. So we are seeing your screen. If you put the full screen, it will be even more visible. Yeah, okay. So my name is Sungjin Park from South Korea, and I am a smart city expert working at AXSChat. LG Uplus, one of the major telecommunication companies in South Korea, but I came here to join this session. not as the representative of LG U+, but as a smart city expert who worked in the field over decades. And today, I would like to share with you about the journey of Korean cities toward the city versus. And before moving to the next slide, I also would like to express my appreciation for inviting me as the presenter in this very good and valuable session.

Kamelia Kemileva:
Dr. Park, sorry, we are trying to share the screen, just looking at the desk. So, is it okay? So, could you please continue and I will inform you when the screen is shared. So, just please continue with your presentation.

Sung Jin Park:
Yeah, okay.

Kamelia Kemileva:
So, you need to share your screen. So, could you push the bottom that you share your screen yourself? Oh, I already did, I think. So, let me. You did it at the beginning. Yeah, we can. Yeah, we have the slides and we can. So, we have your slides. So, you can say just four slides. It’s coming. Okay. The journey of Korean city towards city versus. Brilliant. Okay. So, just put it on the diaphragm. Okay, thank you. So, go ahead. So, this is the first slide anyway. Excellent. Yeah.

Sung Jin Park:
So, actually today, I see the kind of a different definition for the city versus. So, you know, like a city versus itself is a quite kind of exciting term. And so, when I prepared this presentation, the first thing I did was to define city versus from smart city perspective. And actually my definition for city versus is cities running on a cyber physical system. Cyber physical system present interactions between the physical and virtual world through interconnected network and massive IoT and data, and bring the outcomes of enhancing scientific decision-making processes and improve or augmenting realities. For the successful establishment of city versus or the successful operation of city versus, I think there are four preconditions. The first one is visual presentation of cities, meaning digital twins. So buildings and roads and infrastructures and public spaces, they should be transformed into a three-dimensional digital map. And the second one is past and present data. Like for example, changes in temperature and wind speed, weather, history of accidents, and population density changes. All those data should be integrated into digital twins. And actually in order to do that, to somehow cities needed to have infrastructure of data management and collection. And the third one is governance structure. Even if you get good insights or action in need from the analysis or simulation of city versus, still, if it does not have any type of procedures and protocols or responsible units or department, then the impact of those insights on cities can be limited. So, these are cities like a digital twins and data infrastructure and governance structures are the essential element for city versus, and then the contents and applications and any type of services can come into play. That is my kind of aspect of city versus. And I think it was unintentional, but Korea’s, Korea cities, what Korean government’s like policies and direction was actually moving forward to city versus. So, over the past 10 years, Korean governments, they deployed integrated city operation platform, and also they developed open source based city data hub. And recently, they announced the digital twin initiatives. So, integrated city operation platform. operation center. So if you see the like the centers like shown in photo, it means that the city has the system that can monitor and ready to respond any type of accidents or situation taking place in the city. So the implication of having this type of platform means that the cities they do have capital or readiness of governance structures. So in case of South Korea, the Korean government, they deployed this type of platform to over 200 local governments since 2015. It means almost all the cities in South Korea, they do have integrated city operation platform, meaning that they have a governance structure that can process any type of insights or actions in need brought from city versus. The second one is open source based city data hub. This is similar to FIWARE in Europe. So the Korean government, they spent about $130 million for the development of this city data hub for five years. And about 150 public institutions and agencies and private companies, they participated in the development of the city data hub. So this is similar to FIWARE in Europe. So this is similar to FIWARE in South Korea. And the applicability of this platform, this city data hub, are being tested in a few major metropolitan cities like Gwangju and Daegu in South Korea. In 2022, the government announced the Digital Twins Homeland Initiative, and they have been establishing digital twins for national infrastructure, like subways and roads and water grids and so on. And also, they are setting digital map data standards, and they have been implementing 1,000-scale digital maps at national level. And they also created mechanisms to promote the establishment of digital twins at city level. So, while preparing the presentation for this session, it gave me the opportunity to kind of evaluate Korea’s direction toward city versus. And what I have found was that there are heavy tendencies to focus primarily on technical perfection over meaningful applications. And also, we do have lots of user cases and references and best practices using city versus, like Seoul case, but overall, many cities use cases to somehow exploratory. exploratory, rather than become like a powerful reference model that can be used across different cities. So, I think we are in the stage of, in need of proactive consolation for the city versus as a means of developing inclusive and sustainable and people-centered cities. And even though we do have not, remain not many times, but I hope through today’s like a discussion or Q&A sessions to somehow it can guide the direction of Korean governments toward the city versus. So, this is the end of my presentation and thank you for listening.

Kamelia Kemileva:
And we thank you very warmly for this very fantastic presentation. It looked like being in the future. I can tell you, we are not yet there in Switzerland. With this, it was perfect timing, but I still have to give you the floor probably for the very last closing 10 seconds remark. We agreed, sorry, behind your back with Christina that it will be you as main organizer. So, you have virtually one minute and thank you very much for this.

Jung-Sook Park:
Okay, thank you very much for a wonderful session. And also, I would like to thank all of our audience because city versus really new for us, especially gender gap is existing in this field as well. But for kids, like my son, is very familiar with this kind of city versus system. So, we have We have to go beyond the barriers we are facing, so next year and also congratulations on your new initiative, so we will see more development in the near future. Thank you very much.

Kamelia Kemileva:
Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you for ITU. Thank you for all the partners and have a nice afternoon.