UNITAC Hamburg, the United Nations Innovation Technology Accelerator for Cities, operates from Hamburg, Germany, as a collaboration between UN-Habitat, the UN Office for Information and Communications Technology, and HafenCity University, with support from the German government. Launched in spring 2021, it applies prototyping and research to create digital tools advancing Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 11 on sustainable cities.
The initiative centers on three areas: governance of data and digital platforms, spatial analysis and visualization, and people-centred smart cities. Solutions are prototyped in Hamburg's local testbed before piloting with partners in academia, business, civil society, and government.
Notable projects include BEAM, a machine learning tool mapping over 587 informal settlements in South Africa's eThekwini municipality, home to 314,000 households and a quarter of the city's population, to track changes and aid planning. Another is the City Resilience Diagnostic Tool, using knowledge graphs to assess urban vulnerabilities to shocks like floods and stresses like water shortages.
UNITAC shares results as guidelines and toolkits, exhibited at events like the World Urban Forum, targeting urban digital transformation worldwide.