On January 19th, the kick-off meeting of the EU-funded Coordination and Support Action HORIZON EUROPE project METACITIES took place in Athens. The project, coordinated by Prof. Spyros Denazis of the University of Patras, aims to establish an Excellence Hub for future cities and regions in Southeast Europe, built upon Digital Twins and metaverse technologies.
The METACITIES project will establish an Excellence Hub that spans a large geographical area, that of Southeastern Europe, represented by three clusters in Cyprus, Greece, and Bulgaria. Each cluster consists of partners involved in the Quadruple Helix (i.e., scientific, industrial, social, public) with the aim to collaboratively design common digital Research and Innovation strategies, policies, and joint pilots, orchestrated towards the benefit of the citizens, the stakeholders, the local ecosystems and the growth of the whole southeast European region.
The Southeast Digital Innovation Hub, represented by Prof. Sotir Sotirov, was presented to the other partners in the project as a key player in the project. The goal of the project is to foster cross-border collaboration focusing on innovation and engaging all different categories of actors of the Quadruple Helix. To this end, specific domains with strong social footprint are selected as reference implementations in order to guide and validate the proposed framework and efficiently coordinate the input from the different actors, academic, business, public authorities and societal actors, comprising the three participating clusters, Cyprus, Greece and Bulgaria.
The kick-off meeting was a great opportunity for the partners to come together and discuss the project’s goals and strategies, as well as to plan the next steps in the project’s implementation. The Southeast Digital Innovation Hub is excited to be a part of this project and looks forward to working with the other partners to make the project a success.
Overall, METACITIES project is a great opportunity for the Southeast European region to collaborate and advance in digital research and innovation, aiming to benefit the citizens and the local ecosystems, and promote the growth of the whole region.
More info about the project: https://metacities-hub.com/
