NEXCITY

European cities face a structural challenge: vast urban data across mobility, environment and spatial planning remains fragmented across systems, organisations and borders, hence preventing the integrated, evidence-based decisions needed to meet Green Deal targets and deliver resilient, liveable urban environments.

NEXCITY addresses this by deploying a MIM-compliant, SIMPL-compatible urban data space across Valencia (Spain) and Rotterdam (Netherlands). As two EU Mission Label cities representing distinct urban profiles, a Mediterranean smart city pioneer and a Northern European delta city, both cities demonstrate that the DS4SSCC Blueprint can be operationalised in real municipal infrastructure within a 3-month window.

The pilot delivers seven validated use cases across four Green Deal domains: predictive traffic management and sustainable mobility planning; weather, climate and extreme weather events; zero pollution; and New European Bauhaus spatial planning, integrating over 15 dataset types published through a DCAT-aligned federated catalogue with differentiated open, restricted and closed access levels. 

Cross-city data exchange is enabled by a SIMPL-compatible gateway built on open EU standards — OGC APIs, OpenAPI 3.0, NGSI-LD, ensuring full platform portability and no vendor lock-in at the data or governance layer. 

Furthermore, NEXCITY uniquely unites the operational results of two individual DS4SSCC pilots (GEO4WATER (Valencia) and DT-aCoGo (Rotterdam)), elevating them to a higher TRL by extending their data integration and digital twin foundations with Scenexus's advanced dynamic simulation capabilities. This moves the pilot beyond static data exchange, delivering scenario-based insights up to 1,000 times faster than conventional planning tools across mobility, air quality, heat stress and noise.

The consortium brings exceptional readiness. Valencia chairs the EDIC Citiverse initiative, operates a live SIMPL node, and leads the CitCom.ai Southern Superhub across 11 EU countries. Rotterdam, which completed DS4SSCC Round 3 (DT-aCoGo), enters NEXCITY with a deployed Open Urban Platform, validated connector architecture and operational digital twin infrastructure. Hence, operational risks are tackled from day 1.

Scenexus, a TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) spin-off backed by €1.6M from Lumo Labs and TNO on its first day, with deployments across Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Singapore and San Diego and a showcase at MWC 2026, operates Urban Strategy as the shared interoperability and scenario execution layer across both cities. 

Beyond the pilot, NEXCITY delivers an EU-wide replicable blueprint, validated building block compliance evidence from two Member States, a Data Cooperation Canvas template and a scaling roadmap, all of which contribute permanent reference assets to the DS4SSCC ecosystem. Lastly, the pilot engages a minimum of 30 stakeholders across both cities (municipal policymakers, urban planners, transport authorities,  environmental agencies and citizen representatives), ensuring cross-domain scenario outputs are validated against real operational and governance needs from day one.