Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping the global economy and accelerating digital transformation across nearly every sector of society. From healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and agriculture to education, intelligent transportation, cybersecurity, climate action, and future communication networks, AI technologies are increasingly enabling more efficient services, intelligent infrastructure, and innovative digital solutions. At the same time, concerns remain regarding unequal access to digital infrastructure, computing resources, data ecosystems, and AI expertise, particularly in developing countries and underserved communities, raising the risk of a widening global digital divide. To help address these challenges and promote more inclusive AI development, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), through the AI for Good platform, launched the Innovate for Impact initiative as a global mechanism for identifying, promoting, and supporting impactful AI solutions addressing real-world challenges. Since its launch in 2024, the initiative has continued to expand both in scale and international engagement. In 2024, the programme received strong recognition from scholars, innovators, and industry experts, validating the practical value of AI use cases in addressing societal and development challenges. Building on this momentum, the initiative further expanded in 2025 through renewed global calls for AI use cases and AI scholars, strengthening international collaboration and enriching the global repository of impactful AI applications. Reflecting evolving global AI priorities, the 2026 edition introduced thematic focus areas including AI agents, generative AI, secure and trustworthy AI systems, embodied AI, open-source AI, AI for finance, and space computing. These domains highlight the growing convergence between AI, critical digital infrastructure, scientific innovation, and inclusive sustainable development.
How can all countries, at all levels of economic development, benefit from trusted artificial intelligence (AI)? Collaboration will be key. No country can build the entire AI value chain alone, and very few can put together all the chips, models, data and applications needed to build the entire AI stack at home. While every country wants a strong AI ecosystem, that should not lead to isolation and fragmentation. With international collaboration and open standards, we can drive shared progress on AI and help every country and company make the choices right for them. Creating connections is one of the core aims of ITU’s AI for Good programme and our partnerships with fellow UN agencies and standards bodies. We are advancing technical collaboration and global standards in areas from AI-native networks, embodied AI and multimedia authenticity to AI innovations for better health, agrifood systems, disaster risk reduction, road safety and smart cities. And with our new AI for Good Lab, we aim to provide public AI infrastructure and expert guidance to help everyone build solutions, standards and skills for long-term success with AI. Success with AI calls for new innovation ecosystems built on common understandings and trust. That’s what consensus-based standards are all about. This report highlights the many ways we can work together to create the future we want.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly emerging as a general-purpose capability across higher education, reshaping how universities teach, assess learning, conduct research, develop talent, support lifelong learning and advance their public-interest mandate. The roundtable examined this transformation from the perspectives of university leadership, industry and international cooperation. Universities occupy a distinctive position in the AI ecosystem. They are users of AI in teaching and research, producers of AI knowledge and talent, and custodians of academic values, including integrity, rigour, openness, inclusion and service to society. This dual role requires universities to innovate while putting policies, safeguards and institutional capabilities that ensure the responsible use of AI. The discussion emphasized the need for universities to adopt a hybrid AI governance model: an institution-wide AI policy establishing common principles, accountability arrangements and risk-management expectations, complemented by domain-specific guidance for teaching and learning, research, assessment, procurement, ethics, data governance, accessibility and partnerships.
This guide presents a structured and comprehensive framework for understanding, assessing and progressively advancing autonomous cities. It defines autonomous cities as urban environments in which constituent systems such as mobility, energy, water, safety, health, public services and digital infrastructure operate with varying levels of sensing, decision-making, execution and learning capability. The concept is not intended to imply a city without human governance. Rather, it describes a continuum in which human institutions, public objectives and autonomous technologies interact to improve urban performance and resilience. The report begins by distinguishing autonomous systems from automated systems. Automated systems execute pre-defined tasks with limited human intervention, whereas autonomous systems can perceive their environment, process information, make decisions and adapt behaviour within defined operational boundaries. Artificial intelligence, including machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, large language models and agentic AI, is an important enabler of autonomy. However, autonomy also depends on sensors, actuators, control systems, data governance, operational procedures and institutional safeguards.
The AI-Enabled Citiverse: Use Cases for Cities in the Age of AI – Introduction takes stock of a pivotal moment in urban development. Across the world, cities are moving beyond pilots and proofs of concept, deploying AI, digital twins, and immersive technologies in ways that are beginning to reshape how urban environments are planned, governed, and experienced. This report examines that shift through the lens of real and emerging use cases, providing a methodology to identify and evaluate AI-enabled citiverse practices from around the world and to draw the general lessons that can shape effective and equitable policymaking. This introductory document provides an overview of the methodology, approach and use cases. There are an additional five supplementary thematic reports which provide deep dives into the following areas: Urban Planning, Placemaking and Infrastructure; City Administration, Services and Public Participation; Economic Development, Education and Tourism; Transport and Mobility; and Public Safety, Health and Disaster Resilience. These reports offer a practical reference for understanding where momentum is already emerging, what types of applications are taking shape, and how cities can begin to identify relevant pathways for adoption, experimentation and scale. Overall, the reports present a structured, internationally curated catalogue of more than 50 use cases across five urban domains, evaluated against sustainability goals, scalability, impact, feasibility, maturity horizon and implementation risk.
How cities grow their economies, prepare their workforces and share their cultures with the world is changing, and the AI-enabled citiverse is opening possibilities. This report examines how AI-enabled citiverse and related technologies are enabling cities to expand access to learning beyond the classroom, build skills pipelines for the jobs of tomorrow, create new forms of economic activity that do not depend on physical footfall, and offer cultural and heritage experiences to global audiences without the environmental costs of mass tourism. It is one of five thematic use case reports that collectively constitute the AI-Enabled Citiverse: Use Cases for Cities in the Age of AI. Together, they provide a practical reference for AI-enabled citiverse implementation across major urban domains. Intended for city leaders, policymakers and urban innovation practitioners, it provides a concise overview of applications through which AI-enabled citiverse and related technologies can strengthen learning continuity and inclusion, expand skills development and future workforce readiness, support sustainable and diversified local economies, preserve cultural heritage, and create more accessible and sustainable tourism experiences, spanning resilient education, virtual skills training hubs, future careers exposure, digital heritage preservation, hybrid economy models, immersive tourism, educational gaming for sustainability, and virtual entertainment. The measure of success in this thematic area is not the sophistication of the platform but whether a young person in an underserved community gains access to a career pathway, whether a local business reaches new markets, or whether a cultural heritage site is preserved for future generations.
Citizens increasingly expect the same responsiveness from their city government that they experience in other areas of their lives, and trust in public institutions, where it has been hard won, is easily lost. This report examines how AI-enabled citiverse and related technologies are helping cities meet that challenge: delivering services that are faster, more accessible and more attuned to the needs of diverse communities, while opening new channels for the kind of meaningful civic participation that rebuilds the relationship between government and the governed. It is one of five thematic use case reports that collectively constitute the AI-Enabled Citiverse: Use Cases for Cities in the Age of AI. Together, they provide a practical reference for AI-enabled citiverse implementation across major urban domains. Intended for city leaders, policymakers and urban innovation practitioners, it provides a concise overview of applications through which AI-enabled citiverse and related technologies can improve public service delivery, enhance citizen engagement and participation, support more sustainable city operations, and strengthen transparency and accountability, spanning smart waste management, XR-enabled fieldworkers, next generation 311 services, citizen sentiment mapping, virtual town halls, civil servant training, immersive community services, and urban air quality monitoring. Technology in public administration earns its place only when it makes services genuinely more accessible, institutions more accountable, and the relationship between city and citizen more responsive. Use cases are examined not only in terms of their technological composition, but through the lens of their relevance to service efficiency, public trust, citizen participation, sustainability and implementation readiness.
When emergencies strike, the margin between an effective response and a catastrophic one is often measured in minutes, and in the quality of preparation that preceded the crisis. This report examines how AI-enabled citiverse and related technologies are strengthening that preparation: enabling first responders to train in conditions they cannot safely recreate in the physical world, allowing cities to rehearse disaster scenarios before they unfold, and giving emergency managers the situational awareness they need to coordinate across agencies at speed and at scale. It is one of five thematic use case reports that collectively constitute the AI-Enabled Citiverse: Use Cases for Cities in the Age of AI. Together, they provide a practical reference for AI-enabled citiverse implementation across major urban domains. Intended for city leaders, policymakers and urban innovation practitioners, it provides a concise overview of applications through which AI-enabled citiverse and related technologies can enhance emergency response, strengthen public health management, improve crime prevention and investigation capabilities, support disaster preparedness, and protect critical infrastructure, spanning immersive operational command and control, cyberthreat simulation for critical infrastructure, digital crime scene investigation, natural hazard prediction, emergency response facilitation, and disaster preparedness simulation. In this domain more than any other, the ultimate measure of innovation is lives protected, response times reduced, and communities better prepared for the crises they will inevitably face. Use cases are examined not only in terms of their technological composition, but through the lens of their relevance to preparedness, situational awareness, coordination, resilience and implementation readiness.
Movement is the lifeblood of a city, and yet congestion, pollution, ageing infrastructure and unequal access to transport remain among the most persistent challenges urban leaders face. This report examines how AI-enabled citiverse and related technologies are giving cities new tools to address those challenges: simulating traffic in real time before interventions are made, optimising transit networks before delays accumulate, planning evacuations before emergencies strike, and designing mobility infrastructure with communities before construction begins. It is one of five thematic use case reports that collectively constitute the AI-Enabled Citiverse: Use Cases for Cities in the Age of AI. Together, they provide a practical reference for AI-enabled citiverse implementation across major urban domains. Intended for city leaders, policymakers and urban innovation practitioners, it provides a concise overview of applications through which AI-enabled citiverse and related technologies can improve traffic management, enhance public transport operations, optimize infrastructure use, strengthen emergency preparedness, support multimodal wayfinding, and enable more inclusive and participatory mobility planning, spanning traffic optimization and simulation, predictive transit scheduling, municipal parking space optimization, multimodal emergency evacuation simulation, immersive mobility-as-a-service, XR mobility planning, and civic multimodal planning. A digital twin of a city’s road network or a predictive transit scheduling system is only as valuable as the reduction in congestion it delivers, the emissions it saves, or the commuter who arrives on time. Use cases are examined not only in terms of their technological composition, but through the lens of their relevance to accessibility, safety, operational efficiency, sustainability and implementation readiness.
The decisions cities make about land use, infrastructure and public space shape how communities live, move, interact and belong for generations. This report examines how AI-enabled citiverse and related technologies are beginning to change the terms on which those decisions are made: enabling planners to test scenarios before ground is broken, communities to shape their neighbourhoods before designs are fixed, and infrastructure operators to understand risk across interconnected systems before crises unfold. It also explores the opportunity these technologies can play in reshaping existing and creating new public spaces and communal experiences. It is one of five thematic use case reports that collectively constitute the AI-Enabled Citiverse: Use Cases for Cities in the Age of AI. Together, they provide a practical reference for AI-enabled citiverse implementation across major urban domains. Intended for city leaders, policymakers, planners and urban innovation practitioners, it provides a concise overview of applications through which AI-enabled citiverse and related technologies can inform the design, management and stewardship of the built environment, spanning participatory planning, digital underground asset mapping, climate adaptation planning for infrastructure systems, hybrid public spaces, lifecycle management and material re-use, and gaming-based urban experiences. What matters is not whether a city has adopted the latest spatial computing platform, but whether planners can make better decisions, communities have a genuine voice in shaping their environment, and infrastructure systems are more resilient as a result. Use cases are examined not only in terms of their technological composition, but through the lens of their relevance to sustainable urban development, civic participation, infrastructure resilience and implementation readiness.