On 10 September 2026, O-CEI Pilot 8 was presented at the Forum on AI and Citiverse: Building the foundations for interoperable and scalable urban innovation, held in Tampere, Finland, on 9–10 September. The Forum was co-organised by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), UN-Habitat and the City of Tampere. It brought together cities, governments, industry, academia, standardisation bodies and international organisations to discuss how AI can be deployed in smart sustainable cities in an interoperable, scalable and inclusive way.AI
Pilot 8 took part in Session 5, People First: AI for Better Cities. The session looked at human-centred, inclusive and sustainable urban innovation. Chiara Valerio, from HES-SO, presented the approach to social acceptance by design, combining:
- Qualitative surveys to understand attitudes, concerns and motivations
- Conjoint analyses and discrete choice experiments to measure which features and trade-offs matter most to users
- Participatory workshops with local communities
This work aims to develop flexibility solutions with citizens, not simply for them. Their input from surveys and workshops shapes how the solutions are designed and how they are presented.
The Forum’s themes of interoperability, trust and people-centred design match what Pilot 8 is exploring on the ground. The Forum was a chance to share early lessons from the Swiss pilot with an international audience of urban and AI practitioners. O-CEI will keep showing how social acceptance can be built into smart energy services from the start, rather than added afterwards.
