Urban Transformation

Urban areas are evolving rapidly, facing complex challenges – ranging from mobility and climate resilience to citizen engagement and digital infrastructure. At DIGTCOM, we explore how digital technologies can support sustainable urban development by putting people, data, and design at the centre. We focus on real-world contexts where digital innovation intersects with societal needs, everyday practices, and public policy.

Our work builds on a solid history of large-scale European projects in smart cities and urban transformation such as OrganiCity and Synchronicity. These initiatives have laid the groundwork of DIGTCOM for co-creating digital solutions with citizens, municipalities, and industry partners across diverse urban contexts. This foundation enables us to scale ideas from prototypes to impactful, long-term solutions embedded in city systems.

We take an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together human-computer interaction, data science, anthropology, and social sciences. By collaborating with city governments, businesses, and communities, we aim for digital innovation that not only solves real-world problems but also supports inclusive and democratic urban futures. Our work is rooted in dialogue, experimentation, and a strong commitment to shaping technology that matters.

Ongoing Projects

Urban Transformation

European energy data spaces

Relying on European common standards, the EU-funded OMEGA-X project implements an energy data space. This includes federated infrastructure, data marketplace and service marketplace, involving data sharing between different stakeholders and demonstrating its value for concrete energy use cases while guaranteeing scalability and interoperability with other data space initiatives.

Urban Transformation

Sustainable digital transformation in the lifestyle industry

DIGTCOM has come together with Vision Denmark, VIA University College and VR company MANND for two projects focusing on sustainable digital transformation in the lifestyle industry. The projects are working in the intersection of various digital tools and technologies such as 3D, XR and body scanning, exploring the possibilities with a strong focus on fashion experiences. They offer a series of hands-on experiences, workshops, matchmaking events and hackathons where fashion companies, tech providers and students will have the opportunity to meet and work together.

Selected Publications

Handbook for User Engagement in OMEGA-X Use Case Families

The Handbook for User Engagement outlines a human-centred approach to OMEGA-X, focusing on Use Case Families and Pilots while ensuring transferability. It builds on learnings from related projects, defines stakeholder engagement principles, identifies sociocultural barriers, and supports societal impact pathways. Recognizing citizens' key role in the energy transition, it promotes interoperability with sister projects and follows an iterative methodology.

Heijnen, A.; Vijayasundaram, R; Valiño, J.; Rodriguez, M.G.; Lambert, E.; Mancel, F.; Traverson, B.; Maqueda Moro, E.; Calvez, P.; Castellvi, S.; Marques, M. I.; Coito, T.; Frusone, S.; Aragüés Peñalba, M.; Djørup, S.; Firman Fjellså, I. (2022). Handbook for User Engagement in OMEGA-X Use Case Families, OMEGA-X D2.1 Annex.

Past Projects

Urban Transformation

IoT-enabled services for cities and communities

SynchroniCity aimed to open up a global market for IoT-enabled services for cities and communities, where public authorities and businesses develop and deploy services using new technologies in agile partnerships to sustain and improve the lives of citizens, and to ensure sustainable local economic development. SynchroniCity was a European IoT Large-Scale Pilot funded by the European Commission.

Read more about the project here

Urban Transformation

Smart Cities through Experimentation-as-a-Service

OrganiCity explores how citizens, businesses, and city authorities can work together to create digital solutions to urban challenges. Based on technologies such as the Internet of Things or Artificial Intelligence, it approaches those challenges through experimentation while it is underpinned by certain values.

Read more about the project here

Urban Transformation

Innovative solutions based on open data for better public services

SCORE is a European Union funded project with nine cities and three universities participating: Amsterdam, Aarhus, Aberdeen, Bergen, Bradford, Dordrecht, Ghent, Gothenburg, Hamburg, University of Amsterdam, Aarhus University and University of Bradford. The partners develop innovative solutions based on open data and focus on sharing insights and methodologies for developing better public services.

Read more about the project here

Contact

Franziska Garms

Member of Administrative Staff School of Communication and Culture - Department of Digital Design and Information Studies

M frgar@cc.au.dk
H 5347, 237
P +4587151821

Adriënne Heijnen

Project Coordinator School of Communication and Culture - CC's Management Secretariat

M ahe@cc.au.dk
H 1580, 427
P +4524946328

Revised 23.07.2025

Rachel Charlotte Smith