AI Testing and Experimentation Facilities for Smart Cities & Communities

24 March 2026

The EU-wide network of permanent testing and experimentation facility (TEF) for smart cities and communities helps accelerate the development of trustworthy AI in Europe by giving companies access to test and try out AI-based products in real-world conditions.

TEFs provide access to virtual and physical test environments such as traffic management platforms, digital twins, etc., to test and validate AI models and technologies. Access to real infrastructure, combined with a regulatory sandbox, advances Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) while ensuring legal and ethical compliance. TEFs facilitate interaction and collaboration between AI innovators and cities, reducing deployment time and creating value across domains.

The Smart Cities & Communities TEF project CitCom.ai provides such facilities relevant for AI and robotics solutions targeting sustainable development of cities and communities. CitCom.ai focuses on three areas and supports AI-based innovations that promote solutions for use cases such as:

  1. POWER targets changing energy systems and reducing energy consumption (e.g. solutions such as adaptive street lighting; cybersecurity, ethics & edge learn)
  2. MOVE targets more efficient and greener transportation linked to logistics and mobility (e.g. urban machine learning algorithms such as predicting pedestrian flow, smart intersection, identifying road safety concerns, electro-mobility and autonomous driving)
  3. CONNECT serves citizens through local infrastructures and cross-sector services (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions and noise management, urban development management, delivery management by drones and tourism management)

CitCom.ai services are divided into physical and virtual testing facilities, legal and ethical services, data support, citizens engagement, etc. Co-funded by the Digital Europe Programme, Citcom.AI is organised as three “super nodes” Nordic, Central and South with satellites and sub-nodes located across 11 countries in the European Union: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Spain, Poland and Italy.

Source: The original article was published here