III - Digital Twins enable smarter decision making

By running multiple simulation models through digital replicas of their cities, urban planners can assess the potential impact of decisions on issues such as mobility, pollution, energy and the built environment.

Climate Change and Environment

© European Union, 2024

We wanted to see if the Digital Twins concept could help us to predict policy outcomes.

Lieven Raes, DUET project coordinator

Digital Twins are computer models used by city officials to better manage resources, and to improve the lives of residents. The EU-funded DUET project sought to encourage more policymakers to make use of this innovation, through demonstrating the potential of the technology for making more informed decisions.

“A Digital Twin is a 3D digital replica of a system,” explains project coordinator Lieven Raes from the Flemish Government (website in Dutch) in Belgium. “The idea originated from the manufacturing sector, but a few years ago began to be applied at the scale of a city, with all its complexity and unpredictability.”

3D for smarter cities

The focus of the DUET project was to show how 3D representations of urban environments can help in the development of smart cities (website in Dutch). “We wanted to see if the Digital Twins concept could help us to predict policy outcomes,” says Raes.

By combining simulation models, the project team was able to assess how a particular policy decision – the pedestrianisation of a road perhaps – might impact a range of factors such as mobility, pollution and the overall built environment. The concept was trialled in Flanders in Belgium, Pilsen in Czechia and Athens in Greece.

DUET’s success supports the delivery of the EU’s plan for 100 climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030. Raes believes that the roll-out of Digital Twins will make it easier for city managers to react quickly to real-time events, and ensure long-term policy decisions are more effective and trusted.

Launched in 2019, DUET received a prize for Best Enabling Tech at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, Spain two years later. The award helped to raise the project’s profile, and created further interest in Digital Twins. The project team is now working on a book on the concept, with publication planned in 2024.

Keywords

DUET, EU missions, cities mission, adaptation mission, climate change, projects info pack, research, innovation, resilience, sustainable, urban, climate-neutral, smart mobility, clean energy