When Your City Can Think: Building Agentic Digital Twins for Smart City Emergency Response
Keynote at the University of Dubai: Ahcene Bounceur presents CupCarbon-Klaines, an Agentic AI framework that embeds autonomous, LLM-powered agents into smart city Digital Twins to replace static emergency scripts with intelligent, coordinated crisis response. Organized with IEEE TEMS, IEEE SMC, and IEEE RAS. 16 September 2026, 12:15 PM – 2:00 PM, Room 102A, CEIT.
When Your City Can Think: Building Agentic Digital Twins for Smart City Emergency Response is a keynote lecture hosted at the University of Dubai in collaboration with the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society (TEMS), the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society (SMC), and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS). The session takes place on 16 September 2026, from 12:15 PM to 2:00 PM, in Room 102A, CEIT.
The keynote is delivered by Dr. Ahcene Bounceur and addresses a pressing question for modern urban management: what happens when a fire, a gas leak, and a flood strike a city at the same time? Despite significant investment in sensing and monitoring infrastructure, today's smart cities continue to rely on rigid, rule-based programs that were never designed to reason through compound, simultaneous crises. This session examines how agentic artificial intelligence can close that gap.
At the centre of the talk is CupCarbon-Klaines, an Agentic AI framework that embeds autonomous, LLM-powered agents directly into smart city Digital Twins. Rather than executing static emergency scripts, these agents are capable of reasoning, coordinating, and adapting in real time, replacing predefined procedures with intelligent orchestration across the urban environment.
The keynote walks through three key innovations of the framework:
- A visual, drag-and-drop Agentic Builder that allows planners and engineers to design AI-driven emergency workflows without low-level coding.
- An open interoperability layer that connects the Digital Twin to external AI platforms, avoiding vendor lock-in and enabling the integration of diverse models and services.
- A three-paradigm programming model that lets cities adopt agentic intelligence incrementally, aligning the pace of adoption with institutional readiness and existing infrastructure.
Together, these components enable a layered architecture in which building-level micro-agents handle localized response while a city-level orchestration agent manages macro-logistics, ensuring that local actions remain coherent with the broader emergency picture.
The session will be of particular value to researchers and students in artificial intelligence, digital twins, smart cities, robotics and automation, systems engineering, and technology management, as well as to practitioners involved in urban resilience, emergency planning, and public safety. Attendees will gain insight into how autonomous agents can be practically embedded within city-scale simulation and control environments, the architectural choices that make such systems open and extensible, and the pathway by which municipalities can move from rule-based automation toward genuinely adaptive emergency response.
Date and Time
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- Academic City Emirates Road - Exit 49 - Dubai
- Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- United Arab Emirates 000000
- Building: CEIT
- Room Number: 102A
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satalla@ud.ac.ae
Speakers
Ahcene Bounceur of University of Sharjah
When Your City Can Think: Building Agentic Digital Twins for Smart City Emergency Response
What happens when a fire, a gas leak, and a flood hit a city at the same time? Today's smart cities still rely on rigid, rule-based programs that were never designed to reason through compound crises. This keynote introduces CupCarbon-Klaines, an Agentic AI framework that embeds autonomous, LLM-powered agents directly into smart city Digital Twins, replacing static emergency scripts with intelligent orchestration.
The talk walks through three key innovations: a visual drag-and-drop Agentic Builder for designing AI-driven workflows, an open interoperability layer for connecting to external AI platforms, and a three-paradigm programming model that lets cities adopt agentic intelligence incrementally. Together, these enable building-level micro-agents for localized response and a city-level orchestration agent for macro-logistics.
Biography:
Dr. Ahcene Bounceur, IEEE Senior Member, is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Sharjah. Previously, he served as an Associate Professor at KFUPM and as a Senior Associate Professor with qualifications for professorship at the University of Brest in France. In 2021, he was appointed by the French Ministry as a member of the National Council of Universities (CNU). His current research centers on Agentic AI, Digital Twin IoT, Cybersecurity of smart critical infrastructures, as well as exploring Data Science, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), and Pseudo-polygons.
Dr. Bounceur earned his Habilitation to Lead Research (HDR) in 2014, his Ph.D. in Micro and Nano Electronics from Grenoble INP, France, in 2007, an M.Sc. in Operations Research from ENSIMAG, Grenoble, in 2003, and his Engineering degree in Operations Research from the University of Bejaia. He placed 3rd in the IEEE TTTC Doctoral Thesis Contest in Berkeley, USA, in May 2007. He has coordinated the PERSEPTEUR project and collaborated in the Suidia project, an IoT-based digital health initiative that resulted in a patent. To date, Dr. Bounceur has published over 200 articles and has frequently been invited as a keynote speaker. He is also the primary developer of the CupCarbon simulator.
Email:
Address:P. O. Box 27272 Sharjah, UAE, , Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Agenda
Event: When Your City Can Think: Building Agentic Digital Twins for Smart City Emergency Response
Date: Tuesday, 16 September 2026
Time: 12:15 PM – 2:00 PM
Venue: Room 102A, CEIT, University of Dubai
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Ahcene Bounceur
Organizers: University of Dubai, IEEE TEMS, IEEE SMC, IEEE RAS
12:15 PM – Welcome and Opening Remarks
Opening of the session and introduction of the keynote speaker.
Keynote Address – Dr. Ahcene Bounceur
"When Your City Can Think: Building Agentic Digital Twins for Smart City Emergency Response"
Keynote content :
- The challenge of compound crises: why rule-based smart city programs fail when a fire, a gas leak, and a flood occur simultaneously
- Introduction to CupCarbon-Klaines: embedding autonomous, LLM-powered agents directly into smart city Digital Twins
- Innovation 1: A visual drag-and-drop Agentic Builder for designing AI-driven workflows
- Innovation 2: An open interoperability layer for connecting to external AI platforms
- Innovation 3: A three-paradigm programming model enabling incremental adoption of agentic intelligence
- Architecture in practice: building-level micro-agents for localized response and a city-level orchestration agent for macro-logistics
- From static emergency scripts to intelligent orchestration
Questions and Discussion
Open discussion with the speaker on agentic AI, Digital Twins, and smart city emergency response.
Closing Remarks – 2:00 PM
Conclusion of the session.
Hosted by the University of Dubai in collaboration with the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society (TEMS), the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society (SMC), and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS). Join us on Tuesday, 16 September 2026, from 12:15 PM to 2:00 PM in Room 102A, CEIT, University of Dubai, to explore how agentic Digital Twins can transform smart city emergency response.
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