data management & data strategies

In this ISCN Global Mixer looked at how the city of Ingolstadt managed to turbocharge their publication of Open Data through AI. Over 200 government datasets are now openly accessible there, thanks to an AI-driven approach that boosts transparency, resource efficiency, and compliance with the EU Directive on High-Value Datasets.

Key takeaways

• Less is more when prompting: Overly detailed AI prompts often led to worse results.
• Use AI where it adds real value – such as for generating descriptive texts, not for rule-based tasks.
• Involve data protection and IT security experts early to prevent compliance issues later.
• Visualizing the data process helps to identify automation potential more clearly.

How can artificial intelligence and automation help cities unlock the full potential of their public data? The Bavarian city of Ingolstadt has taken on this challenge – and delivered a practical, forward-looking solution that combines efficiency, compliance, and innovation. Altuna Saiti from the city of Ingolstadt explains how they achieved this boost to their Open Data practice.

Ingolstadt is setting new standards in open data by using AI and automation to publish statistical data faster, more efficiently, and in full compliance with EU regulations. A central theme was the importance of cross-departmental collaboration – involving the IT department, economic affairs office, statistics team, external service providers, and the operators of Bavaria’s official open data portal, "OpenByData."

Faced with limited resources, one of the project’s core achievements is the ability to generate clean, standardized datasets from a single, complex Excel file into almost 200 machine-readable datasets. These datasets include detailed information on population numbers by age, gender, and nationality, among others.

AI supports the process by generating metadata texts, while rule-based automation handles formatting and categorization. The project shows how smart use of AI, cross-departmental collaboration, and early involvement of legal and data protection teams can enable scalable, compliant open data publishing – even on a tight budget.

Today, Ingolstadt’s open data portal features a growing library of machine-readable datasets – easily accessible, transparently documented, and continuously expanding. The city’s experience proves that meaningful progress in open data is possible – even without large budgets – when strategic thinking, innovative tools, and collaboration come together.

Ingolstadt’s journey serves as a blueprint for digital transformation in the public sector: practical, replicable, and future-ready.

This event is part of the ISCN Global Mixer, a series of events organized by the International Smart Cities Network. The presentations cover a wide range of topics related to international smart city approaches and provide exciting insights into urban digitalization worldwide - in just 30 minutes.
 

In this session of the ISCN Global Mixer we looked at research from the SmartCity Living Lab of DFKI, the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence, that demonstrates the potential of data-driven urban solutions, highlighting benefits for municipalities and remaining hurdles.

Key takeaways

• Participation is essential: Involving stakeholders and end-users early and continuously ensures that solutions are relevant and widely accepted.
• Interdisciplinary collaboration: Bringing together experts from multiple disciplines –urban planning, technology, social sciences, and the arts – leads to more holistic and innovative solutions.
• Flexibility and adaptability: Projects must remain responsive to changing needs and contexts to stay effective.
• Technology as an enabler: Digital tools support – but do not replace – human interaction and social engagement.
• Sustainability and inclusivity: Long-term ecological, social, and infrastructural sustainability must be integrated from the outset.
• Importance of data: Data plays a central role in informing decisions, tailoring interventions, and measuring impact. However, ensuring transparency, data privacy, and ethical management is crucial to maintaining trust and effectiveness.

In this session of the ISCN Global Mixer we looked at research from the SmartCity Living Lab of DFKI, the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence. Dr. Martin Memmel demonstrated the potential of data-driven urban solutions, highlighting benefits for municipalities and remaining hurdles.

“Bringing data to life can already make a difference and make things happen”

Three Example-Projects:

1. ÖkoHaSie 2025 – Urban Participation and Development 

This project focuses on developing localized, climate-related risk assessments for urban areas. Using a matrix-based method, it evaluates various environmental characteristics of neighborhoods – such as surface sealing, slope, or building types – and identifies risks like heat or heavy rainfall.
AI plays a key role by automatically extracting relevant features from cadastral and earth observation data. Additionally, the concept of “climate twins” is used to identify areas that currently face the projected future climate of another region, offering practical insight into adaptation strategies.

2. Ageing Smart – Technology for an Aging Society 

Aging Smart addresses the challenges posed by the aging baby boomer generation. The project develops a data-driven decision-support system to help municipalities plan age-appropriate infrastructure and services – such as housing, healthcare access, and mobility.
Data from various domains – including geospatial data, environmental indicators, and municipal finances – are integrated into a platform that allows city planners to simulate development scenarios and assess their impacts on accessibility and livability.

3. Crafting Futures – From Knowledge to Action

Unlike many research projects that focus on generating more data, Crafting Futures emphasizes action. Based on the belief that we already know enough about climate change, the project aims to make this knowledge tangible and actionable through Augmented Reality (AR).
Using mobile devices, citizens can view real-time data about their environment – for example, local air pollution – and simulate interventions, such as planting trees or modifying street layouts. These actions and their outcomes are visualized in AR, helping to bridge the gap between data, perception, and civic participation. The project promotes co-creation and dialogue between citizens and local authorities to foster shared visions for sustainable urban transformation.

This event is part of the ISCN Global Mixer, a series of events organized by the International Smart Cities Network. The presentations cover a wide range of topics related to international smart city approaches and provide exciting insights into urban digitalization worldwide - in just 30 minutes.

In this episode of the ISCN Global Mixer the city of Halle (Saale) presented their Digital Twin project HAL-Plan. Katja Gehrmann and Albert Steinbach gave insights into the key components of the solution and the toolsets they derive from the twin in the areas of urban planning, ecology, economic development and mobility.

Urban Digital Twins are one of the most discussed topics in the current smart city context. In urban planning, they refer to digital replicas of cities where simulations are generated using real-time and existing data. Digital twins can simulate for example traffic flows, climatic conditions, and the impacts of different building types within a digital model of the city.

In this episode of the ISCN Global Mixer, Katja Gehrmann and Albert Steinbach from the City of Halle (Saale) gave an introduction to HAL-Plan, the digital twin of the City of Halle (Saale). A 3D model of the city serves as the foundation for developing all key components of the software, including an Economic Development Tool (e.g. for land management a cadastre with location data and visualization of commercial spaces and real estate offerings); a Planning Tool for creating planning scenarios; an Ecology Tool for analyzing and evaluating environmental impacts on planning areas and a Mobility Module for including transport infrastructure into the planning process.

The speakers described how their project is set up from the get go for an interoperable scaling and replication, so that their efforts can be shared with all cities interested. As a basis, it uses official geodata from upper government levels, whose provision is continuously improved in Germany like in many other countries. The modular software architecture allows for all sorts of localized adaptations and additional components, while the multi-client capability enables other municipalities to straightforwardly use the infrastructure and add its own right structure to it. Since HAL-Plan follows the public money, public code mandate of the funding programme for Model Projects Smart City from the German Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building, the solution will be made available open source towards the end of the project at the end of 2026. 

Already at present, the city has invited 11 other German municipalities to freely join in testing the solution and to share their experiences with it. This sparks an intermunicipal cooperation which can iteratively improve the development. The speakers reported how the digital twin already is inducing cultural changes in the way cross-departmental cooperation works in their city and thus welcome any follow-up and exchanges with interested parties.

For details on HAL-Plan, check out the recording (18:30 min) of the keynote above.
 

This event is part of the ISCN Global Mixer, a series of events organized by the International Smart Cities Network. The presentations cover a wide range of topics related to international smart city approaches and provide exciting insights into urban digitalization worldwide - in just 30 minutes.