COD (Collaborative Ontology Development) is a French deeptech company building AI-powered solutions that help cities, organizations, and service providers continuously listen to the people they serve and turn authentic human perspectives into actionable insights. COD combines conversational AI with human participation to make public consultation and decision-making more inclusive, accessible, and evidence-based especially for people who are often underrepresented in traditional consultation processes. Its technology has been tested across multiple markets and, in 2026, successfully piloted with the Métropole du Grand Paris to make citizen consultation more inclusive and scalable. COD’s vision is to help build smarter, more people-centred cities where technology does not replace human participation, but amplifies it.

COD will take the stage at Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona on 3 November, from 18:05 to 18:55, at the AI × Cities Stage, with the session:

“Scaling Democratic Engagement: Keeping Every Citizen in the Loop”

The session will explore how AI and conversational technologies can make citizen participation more inclusive, continuous, and scalable, helping cities move beyond traditional consultation models and ensure that more citizens can contribute their perspectives to the decisions that shape their communities.

AI-powered continuous citizen engagement
COD moves beyond one-off surveys and public meetings toward continuous dialogue with citizens and stakeholders, allowing people to participate when and how they are available.

Conversational AI instead of traditional questionnaires
Citizens can express themselves naturally through voice-based, personalized conversations. The AI can inform, ask follow-up questions, clarify points, and help participants formulate more meaningful contributions.

Human-in-the-loop by design
COD is built around the principle that AI should amplify human intelligence, not replace it. Human contributions remain central to the process, particularly for complex or high-stakes decisions.

From opinions to structured knowledge
A key technological innovation is COD’s ability to transform fragmented, unstructured human opinions into structured, contextualized knowledge that organizations can actually analyze and use for decision-making.

Dynamic rather than static understanding of people and topics
COD’s underlying research originated from IDCOLAB and dynamic collaborative labeling, where the representation of users, content, and concepts evolves according to the latest collective knowledge rather than relying on fixed categories.

Contextual and qualified opinions—not just votes
COD can capture why people think something, their concerns, priorities, perspectives, and reasoning, rather than reducing participation to a simple Yes/No or 1–5 rating.

Inclusive participation at scale
Voice interaction and asynchronous access create additional channels for people who may be unable or unwilling to attend physical meetings. The recent Métropole du Grand Paris experimentation showed how the conversational agent could provide an additional space for expression while complementing—not replacing—the work of human facilitators.

Participation + information + deliberation in one process
COD can go beyond “What do you think?” by first giving participants relevant information, then discussing the topic with them, helping them develop their ideas, and finally collecting and validating their recommendations. This was demonstrated in the MGP experimentation.

Traceable and explainable collective intelligence
COD’s value is not simply generating an AI summary. It aims to make the path from individual contributions → collective knowledge → insights/recommendations more structured and traceable. This is particularly important for public-sector and high-stakes decisions.

Measurable consensus and stakeholder perspectives
COD is designed to help organizations evaluate relevance, trust, consensus, and different stakeholder perspectives, turning qualitative participation into decision-support information without eliminating the diversity of viewpoints.

Adaptable across complex domains
The same underlying technology can be configured for different subjects and stakeholder groups—from participatory democracy and smart cities to infrastructure, enterprise strategy, and service evaluation. COD reports applications across 11+ sectors.

A bridge between AI and democratic governance
Perhaps COD’s strongest strategic differentiation is that it addresses a problem that conventional AI systems don’t solve: how to bring authentic human perspectives into AI-supported decision-making. COD is therefore positioned not just as an AI tool, but as an infrastructure for trusted collective intelligence.

COD is committed to responsible and sustainable digital innovation. We aim to reduce the environmental footprint of our AI-powered services through digital sobriety, efficient data and computing practices, and responsible use of AI. At the same time, our core social commitment is to make digital participation more inclusive and accessible, enabling cities to involve a broader diversity of citizens in decisions that shape their communities. We believe a truly smart city must be not only technologically advanced, but also socially inclusive, environmentally responsible, and human-centred.