Immersive & Data-Driven Sustainable Cities and Communities
IDSCC – Immersive & Data-Driven Sustainable Cities and Communities Group focuses on advancing research and innovation at the intersection of data science, immersive technologies, and urban sustainability. The group investigates how large-scale, heterogeneous data - ranging from citizen-generated data, IoT sensor streams, mobility traces, and environmental indicators to cultural, social, and economic datasets - can be transformed into actionable intelligence that supports resilient, inclusive, and human-centric cities and communities. By combining advanced analytics, AI-driven decision support, and immersive technologies (XR, digital twins, interactive simulations), IDSCC develops new ways for citizens, policymakers, and stakeholders to understand complex urban systems, explore future scenarios, and co-design sustainable solutions.
A core pillar of IDSCC’s work is citizen engagement and behavioural change. The group designs immersive, data-informed interventions that actively involve citizens, students, educators, and local communities in sustainability transitions. In particular, IDSCC explores IoT-driven behavioural change interventions, including large-scale deployments in schools and educational environments, where real-time feedback, ambient intelligence, and gamified experiences are used to promote energy efficiency, environmental awareness, and responsible resource use. Immersive narratives and interactive dashboards are leveraged not only to inform, but also to influence everyday decisions, fostering long-term behavioural change aligned with sustainability goals at neighbourhood, city, and community levels.
To address growing concerns around privacy, trust, and data governance, IDSCC places strong emphasis on privacy-preserving AI and federated learning techniques. Rather than centralising sensitive citizen data, the group studies and develops distributed learning approaches that allow models to be trained locally - across schools, municipalities, public services, and urban infrastructures - while sharing only aggregated or encrypted insights. This approach enables data-driven innovation while respecting GDPR requirements, ethical principles, and citizens’ control over their data, making it particularly suitable for smart city services, participatory sensing, and community-scale analytics.
IDSCC also advances data-driven procurement and decision-support services in the context of smart cities and communities. The group investigates how AI, natural language processing, and recommendation algorithms can support public administrations and urban actors in discovering suppliers, evaluating solutions, and designing transparent, evidence-based procurement processes for digital, cultural, and urban services. By linking procurement intelligence with sustainability criteria, performance indicators, and social impact metrics, IDSCC contributes to smarter, fairer, and more accountable public spending aligned with long-term urban resilience goals.
Finally, the group addresses the infrastructure dimension required to support data-driven and immersive services at city scale. IDSCC studies architectures for managing, deploying, and operating hybrid digital infrastructures that combine IoT platforms, edge/cloud computing, data spaces, and immersive service pipelines. This includes research on interoperability, scalability, observability, and governance mechanisms needed to sustain XR services, digital twins, and AI-driven applications within complex urban environments. Through applied research, pilot deployments, and collaboration with public authorities and industry, IDSCC contributes replicable models and tools that enable cities and communities to harness data and immersion responsibly, securely, and sustainably.
In addition to research and pilot activities, IDSCC actively contributes to shaping the international scientific and professional discourse on immersive and data-driven sustainable cities and communities through the organization and stewardship of high-impact conferences, special sessions, and editorial initiatives. The group plays a coordinating and curatorial role in leading venues that bring together researchers, policymakers, industry, and city stakeholders, fostering cross-disciplinary exchange and accelerating the transfer of research outcomes into practice. These activities ensure that IDSCC’s work is continuously informed by, and contributes to, the state of the art in smart cities, urban sustainability, IoT, AI, and immersive technologies. In particular, IDSCC is involved in the organization and scientific leadership of major international conferences such as the 11th IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2) - the flagship IEEE conference on Smart Cities sponsored by the IEEE Smart Cities Community and the IEEE Power & Energy Society - and the 23rd IFIP Networking Conference (NETWORKING 2024), a leading forum for advanced research on networks and digital infrastructures underpinning smart and connected communities.
Complementing these events, IDSCC curates and contributes to prestigious journal special issues that consolidate cutting-edge research and promote long-term scientific impact, including Smart and Circular Cities and Resilient and Sustainable Smart Communities in IEEE Computer Magazine, as well as Resilient & Sustainable Smart Communities in Elsevier Internet of Things. Through these editorial initiatives, the group supports the dissemination of high-quality, interdisciplinary research on urban resilience, sustainability, data governance, and immersive services, while strengthening international research networks and positioning cities and communities at the centre of future digital and sustainability transitions.
