The Département de la Côte-d'Or opens the next phase of its sovereign digital twin and AI agent programme with Akila and ThinkDeep

Dijon, France, October 14, 2026 — The Département de la Côte-d'Or, Akila and ThinkDeep today announced the next phase of a programme creating a sovereign, AI-ready model of more than 200 public sites across 8,700 square kilometres. The programme helps the Département improve public services, manage its assets and adapt to a changing climate, while keeping its data, model and choice of AI under its own governance.

Three layers, one system. Akila builds and maintains the model of the built world: every site, building, document, obligation and observation in one governed spatial context, with each fact anchored to place. ThinkDeep’s agentic AI reads the Département’s archives, registers, imagery and operational records, turning them into facts the model can use on infrastructure that remains in France. Akila’s agents reason across the portfolio, ranking risk, compliance and energy priorities and show the evidence behind each answer, while ThinkDeep’s assistants let staff question the same knowledge in natural language.

NVIDIA Nemotron and Cosmos open models help power the programme’s agents and can run on infrastructure chosen by the Département. Built on the OpenUSD open standard, the model already streams to Département teams at the Cité administrative Henry Berger in Dijon. NVIDIA Omniverse libraries enable developers and AI agents to build simulations in which the next scenarios—a building under heatwave conditions or an evacuation—are visualised and run. One model, one chain of evidence from source to decision.

Better public services and portfolio management. Every Département site is already represented using its own information and public open data, with no hardware to install. Agents assess climate risk, accessibility and energy performance across the portfolio. The new phase extends agents to summer comfort, fire safety and heat refuge.

Compliance status, severity-ranked priorities, energy performance, risk exposure and portfolio-wide analytics are brought together so investment can be directed to the buildings that need it most, with the reasoning shown line by line and source by source.

Adapting to a changing climate. Official French open data already provides site-level climate and natural-risk profiles across the portfolio. The new phase adds summer comfort, carbon footprint and renewable energy potential. Further agents follow the national Cerema climate adaptation catalogue, including automatic protocol orchestration when Météo-France declares a heatwave in Côte-d'Or.

Sovereign by design. The programme runs on French public data and the Département’s own records, under its own governance through Akila. The Département owns its asset knowledge and the spatial context that makes it readable to AI, chooses where the system runs and which models it uses, and can trace every AI conclusion to its sources. ThinkDeep’s French-made platform is hosted entirely in France, can be deployed on-premises or at the edge, and is already proven within France’s central government. The data and reasoning behind each decision stay in Côte-d'Or.

François Sauvadet, Président du Conseil départemental de la Côte-d'Or and President of Départements de France, said:

About Akila. Akila creates and maintains the sovereign, AI-ready model of your built world: spatial intelligence infrastructure for the built world. Akila connects spaces, assets, systems, documents, obligations, observations and operations in one governed spatial context, so people and AI can understand what exists, what is happening and what should happen next.

About ThinkDeep. ThinkDeep AI, based in Bordeaux, builds sovereign multi-agent AI for public administrations and regulated industries: explainable assistants over an organisation's own data, on-premises, at the edge or in the cloud, all hosted in France.