TWINVERSE kick off in Turin: the CALL lab joins the consortium to build AI-enhanced climate-neutral cities

The TWINVERSE project officially launched in Turin, with a two-day kick-off meeting bringing together all 26 consortium partners and representatives from European cities. The event marked the transition from proposal to practice for this Horizon Europe Innovation Action, which will run until 2029 across five Mission Cities: Milan, Cork, Kalamata, Lappeenranta, and Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Representing the CALL lab, Matteo Giacomelli participated in the kick-off alongside partners from Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland, Finland, Belgium, and Serbia. Co-design sessions and technical working groups defined the first steps of a collaboration that will develop AI-enhanced Local Digital Twins to support cities in their transition toward climate neutrality.

Politecnico di Milano‘s contribution to the project operates on two levels. At the planning scale, the team leads the analysis and update of Climate City Contracts, SECAPs, and SUMPs across all five cities, developing methodological tools to translate AI-generated outputs into actionable policy recommendations. At the urban scale, the team co-develops AI services for spatial justice in Milan, addressing energy, cooling, and transport poverty through micro-territorial simulation and socio-demographic data integration.

A central theme of the Turin meeting was the project’s ambition to move beyond resilience toward antifragility: cities that do not merely recover from climate shocks, but learn and strengthen from them. This framing resonates closely with the research agenda developed at CRAFT, the Antifragility Lab at DAStU, which provides a theoretical backbone for TWINVERSE’s approach to governance, innovation, and urban transformation.

The 18-month piloting phase, during which decision-makers in all five cities will use TWINVERSE tools in real planning processes, begins in 2027.