In today’s increasingly digitized cities, data and technology are often seen as tools for improving efficiency but to build more inclusive urban environments, we need to go beyond efficiency and ask: how can data and technology actively support participation and co-creation? One powerful way is by enabling urban stakeholders and citizens to experience, discuss, and understand the impacts of different urban planning and design choices. This process serves two key purposes: (i) enhancing planning practices through better communication and participation, and (ii) supporting informed, transparent decision-making. In this keynote, Dr. Gamze Dane explores how data-driven methods and emerging digital technologies such as AI, eXtended Reality (XR), digital twins, and serious games can support inclusive and participatory urban (re)development. She will share real-world examples where these tools were created and used both to facilitate co-design processes and to gather behavioral data from users engaging with future urban scenarios. These insights are then used to simulate how people might respond to proposed urban interventions, paving the way toward more inclusive and livable cities.

In today’s smart cities, geospatial technologies, such as digital maps, navigation systems, and location-based services, have become essential to how we move, build, and make decisions. They guide everything from urban planning and public transportation to logistics, emergency response, and personal mobility. However, this increasing dependence on geospatial systems also brings hidden risks. As cities evolve into highly interconnected digital ecosystems, these once-passive tools now operate as active components of critical infrastructure, making them attractive targets for cyberattacks and vulnerable to manipulation in ways many stakeholders still underestimate. Dr. Alhelaly opens the keynote by shedding light on how easily digital maps can be manipulated and weaponized in the context of smart cities. He illustrates this through five compelling real-world cases: from scammers altering Google Maps listings to reroute victims to fake bank contacts, to attackers embedding malicious links into navigation directions, and threat actors tracking users through exposed API data. The keynote also revisits a Berlin artist’s experiment that faked a traffic jam using 99 smartphones, and a case where a business was sabotaged by being falsely labeled as “permanently closed.” These cases expose the critical, and often underestimated, vulnerabilities in the geospatial layer of modern urban life. These examples reveal a hidden truth: maps can be manipulated, and smart cities are vulnerable. Dr. Alhelaly advocates for encrypted GIS architectures, Zero Trust design, and a human-centered approach to geospatial security. His keynote bridges geospatial intelligence, cybersecurity, and privacy frameworks to offer actionable strategies for securing urban trust in a data-driven world.

Fueled by climate change, the number of extreme wildfires per year has doubled in the last 20 years. Fires grow out of control quickly, so early detection is essential to prevent them from reaching urban environments. However, dense, continuous monitoring of large areas around our cities across the globe is hardly feasible. Satellite imagery can help close this gap, but many of the relevant public satellites have significant spatial and temporal coverage gaps. Private satellite missions, such as OroraTech’s upcoming Forest constellation, can close this gap. With 10 satellites in orbit, the constellation already has a revisit time of 12 hours anywhere on Earth. With upcoming launches in the following years, the constellation will reach an eventual revisit time of 30 minutes across the globe. With dense temporal and spatial coverage, and a latency down to minutes, fires can be detected much earlier. This protects urban environments effectively from the hazardous effects of fire and smoke across the globe. Beyond Fire, the Forest-Constellation also tracks Land and Sea Surface Temperatures at 200m resolution. The spatial coverage of our sensors allows us to scan half of the Iberian peninsula in one image. This allows urban policy makers to automatically compare urban heat effects or irrigation needs across wide areas.

This workshop aims to stress the key role of geospatial technologies and geodata in improving urban resilience to climate change and disasters, offering an overview into the latest advancements in remote sensing, satellite imagery, drone data, and real-time monitoring systems, and their applications in climate adaptation, risk assessment, and disaster response. Emphasis will be placed on data availability, open platforms, and the integration of different data sources for planning evidence-based efforts. Through real-world applications and global success stories, participants will discover how spatial is being leveraged for different contexts (heat risk analysis, early warning systems, and post-disaster assessments), while also addressing challenges related to data access, quality, and usability.

This workshop delves into the role of participatory mapping in shaping smarter, inclusive and equitable cities. Participants will explore how community-driven data collection and mapping initiatives can empower residents, inform policy, and improve territorial planning outcomes. The session will cover the fundamentals of participatory mapping, including key challenges, best practices and successful application cases. Participants will also be introduced to technologies that can support participatory mapping workflows. A simple case study or live demo will be included to demonstrate how participatory mapping can be implemented in real-world urban contexts. By the end of the session, attendees will have a clearer understanding of how to leverage participatory mapping for collaborative and data-informed city development.