Nuno Rodrigues
The sectors of Digital Twins, Virtual Worlds/Citiverse, IoT and Data Spaces are fragmented, especially the uneven uptake of NGSI‑LD, Smart Data Models/SAREF and governance models creates a barrier for cross‑domain interoperability in cities. Therefore, I focus on harmonising these layers within ITU‑T Citiverse and EU Local Digital Twin (LDT) Toolbox. I also contribute to aligning LDT and Data Space governance with UNE 0087:2025 and the Gaia‑X Trust Framework to operationalise sovereignty, compliance and automated conformance. Moreover, I contribute to mapping LDT/MIM8, NGSI‑LD, SIMPL and Citiverse deliverables to speed deployment and avoid duplicate or conflicting specs.
In my fellowship i have been working to support the challenge of native integration of AI in the context of communication networks. While much success has been achieved in addressing network use cases with intelligent technologies, this has predominantly been applied in a case by case basis, with resulting outputs added to the networks in an ad-hoc way. Instead, AI-native networks are envisioned to accommodate the ubiquitous and native deployment of AI-based solutions in the network.
Through the work of the ITU-T Focus Group on AI-Native Networks, I contributed to the elaboration of use case, and associated requirements. I have also been supporting on the analysis of relevant key technologies that are required to realise the requirements derived from the use cases.
My fellowship supports the development of a standardized framework for trustworthy, AI-native digital infrastructure by moving away from centralized, opaque architectures toward decentralized, composable, and transparent platforms. It addresses key challenges in current digital ecosystems, such as fragmentation, centralization, and lack of trust, with priorities including the development of AI-native composable infrastructure that embeds transparency, privacy, and accountability; the advancement of standards for federated AI, digital twin interoperability, and decentralized identity; and the resolution of gaps in trustworthy execution and governance to reduce Europe’s dependency on non-European platforms. The fellowship further seeks to enable federated, decentralized AI, ensure data sovereignty, and align composable infrastructure with European values of privacy, fairness, and transparency. These standardisation efforts are very significant in facilitating the timely adoption of emerging technologies with a global, interoperable standard for future AI infrastructure.
My work in ITU addresses the priorities of the call pertaining to smart cities and communities, technologies and services for smart and efficient energy use, and citizen centric digital public services and EMC radiation.
With this work, I focus on enabling collaborative ecosystems and models among ICT stakeholders that allow energy saving and a positive environmental and societal footprint, bridging use case workflow and ecosystem design in a way that allows data-driven collaboration and performance increments.
My work supports AI trustworthiness characteristics such as robustness, human oversight, accuracy, cybersecurity, and transparency (all those are requirements from the AI Act).