Smarter Streets Ahead: AI Platform Sets Blueprint For Urban Innovation
A breakthrough in AI-powered traffic management is putting the future of city infrastructure on the fast track — and it's a vision that could soon be applied across cities in Australia and New Zealand.
Milestone Systems has unveiled a next-gen video data platform, Project Hafnia, developed in partnership with NVIDIA and now rolling out in European cities following its inception in the US. At its core, Hafnia is designed to power smarter, safer and more efficient cities through ethically sourced and regulation-compliant video AI models — a concept equally applicable in the Southern Hemisphere.
With traffic congestion, pedestrian safety, and public surveillance emerging as key challenges for growing urban centres across ANZ, Project Hafnia offers a roadmap for leveraging AI responsibly. The system uses NVIDIA's advanced GPU platforms and large-scale video datasets — both real and synthetic — to train visual language models (VLMs) that can help city officials understand traffic flows, detect hazards, or summarise surveillance footage for faster response.
'Our cities don't just need more data, they need better, smarter data,' said Thomas Jensen, CEO of Milestone. 'With Project Hafnia, we're building the digital foundation for cities that are safer, more transparent, and AI-enabled — without compromising public trust or privacy.'
While currently operational in Genoa, Italy, the platform is built to scale globally. The opportunity for ANZ councils lies in adapting this blueprint to local conditions, unlocking better traffic coordination, real-time monitoring, and urban planning insights — all with compliance and citizen protection at its heart.
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London, 24 June 2025 A record-breaking 142,000 millionaires are projected to relocate internationally this year, with the UK expected to see the largest net outflow of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) by any country since international investment migration advisory firm Henley & Partners and global wealth intelligence firm New World Wealth began tracking millionaire migration 10 years ago. Advertisement - scroll to continue reading According to the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2025 published today, the UK is forecast to lose a staggering –16,500 millionaires in 2025 — more than double the anticipated –7,800 net outflow from China, ranked 2nd this year after topping the millionaire-loser leaderboard every year over the past decade. In stark contrast, the UAE retains its crown as the world's leading wealth magnet, with a record net inflow of +9,800 relocating millionaires expected this year — over 2,000 more than the US in 2nd place. +7,500 new wealthy migrants are expected to make America home by year-end. Dr. Juerg Steffen, CEO at Henley & Partners, says this sharp divergence highlights the rising influence of strategic wealth migration on global economic power shifts. '2025 marks a pivotal moment. For the first time in a decade of tracking, a European country leads the world in millionaire outflows. This isn't just about changes to the tax regime. It reflects a deepening perception among the wealthy that greater opportunity, freedom, and stability lie elsewhere. The long-term implications for Europe and the UK's economic competitiveness and investment appeal are significant.' Europe's wealth hubs in retreat — and reinvention The UK is not alone in its struggles. For the first time, EU heavyweights France, Spain, and Germany are expected to see net HNWI losses in 2025 — with projected net outflows of –800, –500, and –400 millionaires, respectively. Ireland (–100), Norway (–150), and Sweden (–50) are also beginning to see significant wealth losses, with many affluent Europeans relocating to more investor-friendly hubs on the continent. Key beneficiaries of this trend are Switzerland, set to attract a net gain of +3,000 migrating millionaires this year, while Italy, Portugal, and Greece are also forecast to see record inflows of +3,600, +1,400 and +1,200, respectively — driven by favorable tax regimes, lifestyle appeal, and active investment migration programs. Southern Europe is fast emerging as a new center of gravity for wealth migration in the region, with Monaco (+200) remaining popular, especially among ultra- HNWIs from the UK, Africa, and the Middle East. Europe's smaller markets are also gaining strong momentum. Montenegro (+150) tops global millionaire growth over the past decade with a remarkable 124% increase in resident millionaires, driven in part by its citizenship by investment program (operational from 2019 to 2022), low taxes, Adriatic coastline, and EU accession prospects. Malta (+500) follows with 87% growth, though its trajectory may be impacted by April's European Court of Justice ruling against its citizenship by naturalization process. Latvia is also on the rise, with 70% millionaire growth between 2014 and 2024, and a projected net inflow of another +100 HNWIs this year. Andrew Amoils, Head of Research at New World Wealth, says 'If one reviews the fastest growing wealth markets in the world over the past decade, it is noticeable that most of these countries are either popular destinations for migrating millionaires — such as Montenegro, the UAE, Malta, the USA, and Costa Rica — or emerging market tech hubs like China, India, and Taiwan. 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The October 2024 budget introduced sharp hikes in capital gains and inheritance taxes, while new rules targeting non-domiciled residents and family wealth structures — enacted by the former Conservative government — came into effect in April, sparking what some are calling a 'WEXIT' (wealth exit). Affluent individuals are relocating to tax-friendly jurisdictions such as the UAE, Monaco, and Malta, as well as to lifestyle havens including Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Switzerland. Many high-earning execs are settling in the expanding wealth hubs of Dubai, Florida, Milan, St. Julian's, Lisbon, the Athenian Riviera, Zug, and Lugano. Prof. Trevor Williams, Chair and Co-founder at FXGuard and former Chief Economist at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, says the UK's economy has performed poorly over the past decade, and is the only nation in the W10 (the world's 10 wealthiest countries) that has seen negative millionaire growth. 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Despite ongoing instability in the Middle East, Israel is expected to show relatively modest outflows (–350), primarily to the US, while Lebanon (–200) faces concerning losses, with many wealthy individuals relocating to Cyprus, Greece, and the UAE. Iran (–200) is also losing HNWIs to the UAE. BRICS bounces back bar Brazil In Latin America, Brazil (–1,200) and Colombia (–150) are both expected to see sizeable wealth drains, with popular destinations for departing millionaires being the US (especially Florida), Portugal, the Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, and Panama. Among other BRICS nations, China (–7,800), India (–3,500), Russia (–1,500), and South Africa (–250) are all on track to record their lowest net millionaire losses since Covid. 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As 2025 unfolds, Asia is set to remain at the center of global wealth trends, shaped by economic dynamism, policy innovation, and the ever-present search for security and growth. About Henley & Partners Henley & Partners is the global leader in residence and citizenship by investment. Each year, hundreds of wealthy individuals and their advisors rely on our expertise and experience in this area. The firm's highly qualified professionals work together as one team in over 60 offices worldwide. The concept of residence and citizenship by investment was created by Henley & Partners in the 1990s. As globalization has expanded, residence and citizenship have become topics of significant interest among the increasing number of internationally mobile entrepreneurs and investors whom we proudly serve every day. Henley & Partners also runs the world's leading government advisory practice for investment migration, which has raised more than USD 15 billion in foreign direct investment. 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Milestone has commenced work on Project Hafnia in Europe, collaborating with the city of Genoa, Italy, to develop AI-driven solutions for traffic management and urban infrastructure using NVIDIA technology. The project's primary objective is to use artificial intelligence to enhance city operations by leveraging regulation-compliant video data, ensuring alignment with European legal frameworks, including GDPR and the EU's AI Act. Project Hafnia, after its launch in the United States, will provide high-quality video data that have been processed using NVIDIA NeMo Curator on the NVIDIA DGX Cloud platform. Milestone is adopting the NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for Smart City AI, which is a reference framework designed to optimise city operations through digital twins and AI agents. In addition to this, Milestone is expanding its proprietary data platform using NVIDIA Cosmos. This approach enables the generation of synthetic video data based on real-world inputs, combining both real and synthetic datasets to build and train vision language models (VLMs) responsibly. The company has engaged Nebius, a European-based cloud provider, to supply the GPU compute required for the training of these models. This partnership is intended to ensure that all data processing and storage remain fully compliant with European data protection regulations, while supporting digital sovereignty objectives and keeping sensitive public sector data strictly within EU jurisdiction. Urban AI applications Project Hafnia seeks to harness the potential of VLMs, which are AI models capable of mapping relationships between visual data—such as images or videos—and corresponding text. This enables the models to generate summaries and insights from visual sources, which can be applied across multiple domains including transportation, safety, and security within city environments. Emphasising the importance of regulatory compliance and ethical data sourcing, the project aims to support cities throughout Europe in building and refining computer vision and AI applications that align with the region's standards for privacy, transparency, and fairness. "I'm proud that with Project Hafnia we are introducing the world's first platform to meet the EU's regulatory standards, powered by NVIDIA technology. With Nebius as our European cloud provider, we can now enable compliant, high-quality video data for training vision AI models — fully anchored in Europe. This marks an important step forward in supporting the EU's commitment to transparency, fairness, and regulatory oversight in AI and technology — the foundation for responsible AI innovation," says Thomas Jensen, CEO of Milestone. The company states that the compliant and ethically sourced data library enabled by Project Hafnia provides the necessary foundation for developing advanced video analytics models and vision language models. The models are configured for optimal performance on NVIDIA GPUs and are compatible with NVIDIA AI Blueprint frameworks focused on video search and summarisation (VSS). Application in Genoa The first practical implementation from Project Hafnia is a European Visual Language Model purpose-built for transportation management. This VLM is developed using transportation data sourced directly from Genoa, Italy, ensuring that only compliant and responsibly gathered data are used. "AI is achieving extraordinary results, unthinkable until recently, and the research in the area is in constant development. We enthusiastically joined forces with Project Hafnia to allow developers to access fundamental video data for training new Vision AI models. This data-driven approach is a key principle in the Three-Year Plan for Information Technology, aiming to promote digital transformation in Italy and particularly within the Italian Public Administration," says Andrea Sinisi, Information Systems Officer, City of Genoa. The framework developed through Project Hafnia is designed for scalability, allowing it to extend across multiple domains and accommodate future technological developments. The resulting compliant data set and the fine-tuned VLM will be made available to participating cities under a controlled access licence model, facilitating broader AI adoption across Europe whilst upholding ethical standards. Nebius as cloud partner Nebius will provide the cloud infrastructure underpinning Project Hafnia in Genoa, ensuring that all processing power and data handling are carried out within the jurisdiction of the EU. This guarantees adherence to European data handling regulations and digital sovereignty imperatives. "Project Hafnia is exactly the kind of real-world, AI-at-scale challenge Nebius was built for," says Roman Chernin, Chief Business Officer of Nebius. "Supporting AI development today requires infrastructure engineered for high-throughput, high-resilience workloads, with precise control over where data lives and how it's handled. From our EU-based data centres to our deep integration with NVIDIA's AI stack, we've built a platform that meets the highest standards for performance, privacy and transparency." Milestone's approach with Project Hafnia positions it as an early adopter within the sector of European AI development, focusing on regulatory-compliant, ethically sourced, and technologically advanced infrastructure solutions for urban environments. Through partnerships with city administrations such as Genoa and technology providers including NVIDIA and Nebius, Milestone aims to facilitate responsible deployment of AI for urban improvement initiatives across Europe.
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Smarter Streets Ahead: AI Platform Sets Blueprint For Urban Innovation
A breakthrough in AI-powered traffic management is putting the future of city infrastructure on the fast track — and it's a vision that could soon be applied across cities in Australia and New Zealand. Milestone Systems has unveiled a next-gen video data platform, Project Hafnia, developed in partnership with NVIDIA and now rolling out in European cities following its inception in the US. At its core, Hafnia is designed to power smarter, safer and more efficient cities through ethically sourced and regulation-compliant video AI models — a concept equally applicable in the Southern Hemisphere. With traffic congestion, pedestrian safety, and public surveillance emerging as key challenges for growing urban centres across ANZ, Project Hafnia offers a roadmap for leveraging AI responsibly. The system uses NVIDIA's advanced GPU platforms and large-scale video datasets — both real and synthetic — to train visual language models (VLMs) that can help city officials understand traffic flows, detect hazards, or summarise surveillance footage for faster response. 'Our cities don't just need more data, they need better, smarter data,' said Thomas Jensen, CEO of Milestone. 'With Project Hafnia, we're building the digital foundation for cities that are safer, more transparent, and AI-enabled — without compromising public trust or privacy.' While currently operational in Genoa, Italy, the platform is built to scale globally. The opportunity for ANZ councils lies in adapting this blueprint to local conditions, unlocking better traffic coordination, real-time monitoring, and urban planning insights — all with compliance and citizen protection at its heart.
