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Digital twins (DT) of cities and regions are gaining in popularity the world over. In Europe, more than two dozen DT initiatives have sprung up in recent years. Some of them are still in development, but many are already operational, having been used to tackle real-world problems like traffic and noise pollution by policy makers and urban planners at different levels of government. Inspired by the success of early adopters, more and more public authorities are now considering DTs as a solution to persistent ‘wicked’ societal challenges. Among the potential adopters of DTs is the Alpine region of Austria. Given its exposure to climate change, the region wants to explore the potential of DT technology in providing advanced capacity to monitor and forecast changes in weather and climate in the mountainous area. To that end, an expert discussion was organised by WESTRIVEUP on 15 November 2021. It included guest speakers from various European DT projects who joined the physical session remotely to share their best practice advice and lessons learned. Representing DUET at the event was Jiri Bouchal of InnoConnect and Pavel Kogut of 21c Consultancy. Jiri showcased Pilsen’s experience with DTs while Pavel gave a general overview of the project, focusing on DUET’s technical architecture and its impact on policy making and communities. Technical architecture DUET’s architecture is based on the open T-cell framework that enables simulation models, IoT data, visualisation components and various endpoints to interact with each other in a common environment. Dynamic correspondence makes it possible to monitor and synchronise the digital twin with the physical environment being mirrored. Thanks to these communication links, DUET’s solution can accurately mirror the complex and evolving nature of urban systems, which makes it an ideal sandbox for policy experimentation. Impact on policymaking DUET provides a risk-free testing environment for simulating alternative policy options. Users can explore a range of what-if scenarios related to traffic, air quality and noise pollution before investing time and resources into costly projects. Traffic analysts can simulate the impact of lane closures caused by construction work, analyse the effects of changes to a signaling plan or try to predict spikes in travel demand caused by local events. Urban planners can assess population exposure to noise generating activities and measure the effects of different policies involving infrastructure, buildings and sound barriers. A simulation showing how a bridge closure in Pilsen impacts air pollution in adjacent streets Impact on communities Digital twin visualisations can build a shared picture of reality, fostering a common understanding among citizens about living conditions and any acute problems that they and their communities are facing. Another category of potential beneficiaries is private companies. For them, DUET’s ecosystem offers an opportunity to create new value propositions by sharing data and services with other providers in a trusted and secure manner. Perhaps DUET’s biggest strength is its ability to make multi-actor collaboration meaningful and sustainable. By offering a holistic perspective on city dynamics, DUET can coalesce stakeholders around local challenges, encouraging them to seek consensus, define a shared vision and co-create solutions that will have a lasting impact. If you want someone from DUET to speak at your event, don’t hesitate to reach out to us using the contact form on the home page.

The annual World Smart City Awards is a highly prestigious international competition that recognises the best pioneering projects, ideas and strategies making cities around the world more liveable, sustainable, and economically viable. DUET has been selected as a finalist for the World Smart City Award category of 'Enabling Technologies', awarded to the most innovative and successful projects being implemented and developed in the fields of data and technology. DUET's focus on the use of local digital twins with predictive simulations to improve government decision making caught the judges eye. "Its an honour to have our achievements recognised by the judging panel' said Lieven Raes, coordinator of the DUET project. "The DUET Consortium have been pushing the boundaries of data visualisations, simulations and evidence based policy making for the past 2 years. Being selected as a finalist provides welcome motivation as we head into the third phase of our project'. Susie Ruston McAleer of 21c, communications lead for DUET, continued, "we conceived the DUET idea at the Barcelona Smart City Expo years ago before anyone was even talking about digital twins for the public sector, so its particularly fitting that we have now been chosen as an awards finalist." Winners will be announced at a ceremony at the World Smart City Expo and World Congress, Barcelona, on November 17, placing DUET and its achievements in the spotlight in front of a large, diverse audience. For a full overview of award categories and finalists visit World Smart City Awards - Finalists | Smart City Expo World Congress 2021

Digital twins are fuelling the development of new ways of delivering more efficient and effective service offerings across multiple industries. The world has seen initial successes in areas like manufacturing and design, but it is still early days for understanding how Local Digital Twins (LDTs) can best deliver benefits to the public sector. To help administrations better understand the kinds of benefits LDTs can deliver for their needs, DUET decided to share its knowledge and insights at Major Cities of Europe, a high-profile conference that brings together representatives of local and regional governments from across the continent. DUET’s participation at the event included a plenary speech and a 90-minute webinar, both of which took place on 14 October 2021. Plenary speech The speech was delivered by Lieven Raes of Digitaal Vlaanderen. In his presentation, Lieven explained how digital twins are shaping the future of government, making its processes more efficient and citizen centric. LDTs enable this transformation by providing a risk-free testing environment for simulating alternative policies to improve city management. They can reveal policies that underperform and identify leverage points for interventions that may succeed. This ex-ante evaluation function makes LDTs a coveted tool among public authorities. And while city administrations are often the main users of LDTs, there are plenty of international examples demonstrating LDT use beyond policy making. A digital twin that is open to the ecosystem can benefit other actors, too. For instance, it can help citizens experience public services better and faster, while companies can develop new products and services based on LDT data. LDT typology The webinar started with a presentation of DUET’s LDT typology. The typology was developed to capture the variety of LDTs emerging all over Europe (there are more than 20 LDT projects at various stages of development). It uses a network-centric approach to categorise LDTs according to two exploitation parameters: usage and control. This mapping leads to the creation of four LDT types: Closed, Network Oriented, Network Owned, and Network Enabled. The typology stops short of prescribing which type is best for what city. The choice clearly depends on local needs and priorities, on data that has to be included and the desired maturity level of a digital twin. For some cities, the Network Owned LDT will be a natural target determined by recent progress in data governance. For those that simply want to enhance urban planning, the Closed LDT may be a more appropriate option. The typology presentation was followed by a demo of the DUET platform which will be accessible to the public end of November 2021. Experts and specialists will be able to create an account, access the data catalogue, make map views, and create new cases and scenarios. Participation and co-creation on the platform will be stimulated through the use of gamification techniques. DUET pilots The second half of the webinar focused on three DUET case studies. The Flemish team gave an overview of several policy challenges their region aims to address through the digital twin. Mobility, spatial planning, health, environment and public safety are top priorities for many Flemish cities. The pilot is currently integrating the required datasets into the digital twin to enable real-time monitoring and what-if simulations of different scenarios linked to these domains. Some interesting results have already been obtained using Cityflows data, which includes telecoms data, wifi scanning and floating car data, among others. For instance, crowd modelling for the city of Antwerp provided insights into the movement dynamics that can be used for a more accurate crowd monitoring in the context of Covid-19. Crowd monitoring in Antwerp The Pilsen team presented the city’s journey through the European H2020 projects (e.g. OpenTransportNet, PoliVisu), explaining how this experience has helped Pilsen embrace the digital twin concept. The results of these projects will be exploited in the Pilsen digital twin to improve interaction between traffic, air quality and noise pollution models. Ultimately, the city will be able to simulate different scenarios of urban development, including road construction/closure, and their impacts on various outcomes, such as the environment and citizens' well-being. Simulation of traffic-induced air pollution in Pilsen The Athens team started by describing two main challenges they are facing in their pilot. One is data related and concerns the lack of open, accessible, usable and interconnected data sources. Another is related to urban challenges such as traffic and air pollution, and also the lack of green spaces and routes for citizens to use. DUET’s solution for Athens will include 1) an open real-time traffic model that can be correlated with environmental data, and 2) a dashboard for green routing. Eventually, the Athens digital twin will serve as a smart hub for ‘green’ city planning. The city will be able to run what-if analysis and mobility simulations taking into account CO2 emissions so that they are reduced through better planning. In the long-run, this will make Athens an enjoyable place for both local and tourists alike. Green route planning in Athens The audience actively participated in the Q&A discussion that ensued. To address Athens’ data challenges, participants suggested several options: Public Private Partnerships, citizen science, an inventory of different public organisations, a mandate for transparency of certain datasets, and more city funding for open data. Responding to the example of crowd monitoring in Flanders, participants generally agreed that LDTs can contribute to Covid-19 control, mainly through better spatial visualisation of infection related data. When asked about policy domains that are most relevant for starting a LDT, the audience clearly favoured environment and wellbeing (air quality, pollution, noise). This was followed by mobility, energy and urban planning. To conclude, the webinar confirmed that interest in LDTs is growing, and it’s largely driven by the need to address urban challenges with advanced data based solutions. DUET is uniquely positioned to offer cities both a theoretical framework and a technical blueprint for identifying and implementing a digital twin project that meets their ambitions and existing/desired maturity level. If you want to build a LDT for your city but not sure how or where to start, please do get in touch with us via contact form on the home page. We’ll be more than happy to help you!

Earlier this month, our colleagues from Pilsen promoted DUET at two national events: ‘Maps are for everyone’ (Mapy jsou pro každého 2021) and Innovation Pilsen (Inovujeme Plzeň). ‘Maps are for everyone’ was organized by the Vysočina Region and gathered about 130 participants from across the Czech Republic. Main stakeholders represented were cities, regional authorities, national ministries and agencies, infrastructure managers, technology companies, GIS specialists, universities and traffic companies. Representing Pilsen at the event was Stanislav Štangl of SITMP. He showcased the city’s journey through EU Horizon 2020 projects PoliVisu and DUET, and explained how this experienced contributed to the implementation of Pilsen’s policy on better urban mobility and the wider Smart City Strategy. Participants were particularly interested to learn how the use of local digital twin can help Pilsen solve its urban challenges related to traffic, air and noise pollution. Figure 1. A digital twin simulation comparing traffic before and after the road closure Innovation Pilsen showcases the city’s achievements in research and technology, and is the third such event organized by the municipality. Partners from InnoConnect and Plan4All had a booth on-site. Passers-by included a lot of young people who had a chance to cast themselves as policy makers and simulate planning decisions in the digital twin to make their city better. Figure 2. Students shown how to use digital twins for policy making

DUET's point of view on the future of responsive smart cities was published this month by the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics in a special peer-reviewed journal on academic and industry research which addresses technology, systems, applications, and services in the Smart and Circular Cities domain. "This edition includes articles targeting important elements such as security and privacy, as well as the integration of technologies like Digital Twins and the Smart Grid, which are still evolving at a rapid pace. Experiences from deployments that use more conventional approaches from a technological stand point offer us glimpses of the near future, while reports from smart city projects using novel methodologies and technologies give us a better sense of how smart city research will evolve to encompass new communities and tools." DUETs paper focuses on the potential which Local Digital Twins offer the Public Sector, showcasing examples directly from DUET pilot partner sites, Athens, Flanders and Pilsen. It then addresses how additional societal value can be extrapolated by supplementing physical information with social and emotional data which will enable future Digital Twins to better support the co-creation of meaningful, data-driven, intelligent urban experiences for all. To read visit: Forging the Future of Responsive Cities Through Local Digital Twins Editorial About ERCIM ERCIM News is the magazine of ERCIM. Published quarterly, it reports on joint actions of the ERCIM partners, and aims to reflect the contribution made by ERCIM to the European Community in Information Technology and Applied Mathematics. Through short articles and news items, it provides a forum for the exchange of information between the institutes and also with the wider scientific community. This issue has a circulation of about 6,000 printed copies and is also available online ,at https://ercim-news@ercim.eu

Thanks to its pioneering work in DUET, the city of Pilsen in the Czech Republic has been recognised as a best practice city in an official study of the European Parliament on Artificial Intelligence and Urban Development. A direct excerpt from the report states: ''... to consolidate its smart-city approach, the city participates in the Digital Urban European Twins project (H2020), by implementing a digital-twin concept focusing on transport, mobility, urban planning, the environment and well-being. It will particularly target noise pollution. This project builds upon previous research projects (H2020) regarding traffic modelling and tools for policy-making (OpenTransportNet, PoliVisu). These models will be exploited in the digital twin via the development of tools for model-model interactions between traffic, air-quality and noise pollution paradigms. Consequently, the city will be able to simulate different scenarios of urban development, including road construction/closure, and their impacts on various outcomes, such as noise, the environment, and citizens' well-being. For instance, a tool for traffic modelling is available online." The newly published research paper explores the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in cities, and its impact on urban socio-economic and territorial cohesion. It finds that due to a strong market focus on 'Smart Cities' expectations around AI use and capabilities are high, but that most cities are just at the start of their AI journeys and that benefits still need to be captured and analysed. For more information on public sector digital twins sign up to the DUET newsletter.

The convergence of Cloud, Big Data and AI has already resulted in major transformation across Government services, yet the process of policy making itself is often left behind. Join Policy Cloud, Decido, AI4PublicPolicy, DUET and Intelcomp at the virtual Evidence Based Policy Making in Europe event to explore major challenges, trends and opportunities to improve public sector decision making that will deliver healthier, happier places to live and work. Digital technologies have changed the world. Today people expect faster, seamless, on-demand services from their providers, and Government is no exception. For effective urban operations which make life easier for residents, workers and visitors, Public Sector decision making needs to become more agile, breaking down data silos to combine day-to-day tactical decisions with longer term policies and strategies. Disruptive technologies such as Digital Twins, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High Performance Computing (HPC) unlock new opportunities for sustainable decision making through visualisations, simulations and predictions that enhance transparency, increase public support and involvement, and optimise resources. To support this transformation, Policy Cloud, Decido, AI4PublicPolicy, DUET and Intelcomp pan-European projects and initiatives dedicated to using cloud for data-driven policy, have joined forces to host Evidence Based Policy Making in Europe, a premier conference for government that focuses purely on data and tools for decision making. Together with leading change agents from the European Commission and Local Government the event will explore the new decision-making ecosystems being built by cities and administrations, including the use cases being adopted, and the innovative data and tools being adopted for modern policy making. Taking place virtually on the 9th and 10th of December, 2021, here's what to expect: Use Cases: We’ve asked our speakers to bring real-life examples of how they are transforming the traditionally slow deliberative policy making process in the fields of health, climate change and mobility, to one that is more agile and responsive. Hear directly from cities themselves on how they are developing better evidence-based policies which adapt as new data comes to light, and which are trusted and contributed to by relevant stakeholders who feel engaged in the process. Tools: See how city managers and policy makers are co-creating data-driven decision-making ecosystems with cutting edge tools which enable them to visualise, analyse and even predict the complex impact of decisions across multiple domains, time and space. Be hands-on with AI, big data and digital twin demos and be inspired by what you could potentially achieve for your administration. Strategies: Learn how to manage legal, ethical and standards challenges and constraints in our increasingly digital world. From best practices to principles and legislation our speakers will help you understand and navigate the complex environment in pragmatic ways that will get you started on your journey. Preliminary agenda: Attendance is open to all. Join us as we forge the future of modern policy making. Learn more and register.

Digital twins are fuelling the development of new business models that promise better, more efficient service offerings. And while we've seen some successes in areas like manufacturing and design, it is not clear whether XaaS-driven approaches have a good fit with, and can deliver the same benefits when applied to the digital twins of smart cities. Determined to investigate that, we developed a typology of local digital twins to serve as a basis for future examination of various commercialisation strategies for different LDT types. An ongoing trend towards more flexible consumption is changing the nature of offerings that companies bring to market. Today, we see more and more technology providers offering anything-as-a-service, or XaaS, solutions to meet evolving customer needs. XaaS companies leverage cloud computing and the Internet of Things to offer customers the ease of access without the responsibility of ownership and maintenance. With XaaS, there is no need to build everything in-house. Organisations can just purchase a XaaS license to take advantage of its extensive infrastructure. What’s more, instead of paying huge sums of money for a complex package, clients can sign up only for those functionalities and services that they really need. And because XaaS and IoT are often bundled in a single offering, users benefit from consolidated access to real-time data across multiple solutions. This way they can manage every data point in the network, whether it’s a supply chain, public transport infrastructure or street lighting system. Digital twins combine IoT, cloud computing and other advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence to provide a clone of a physical entity which can then be monitored, interrogated, remote-controlled, simulated under different conditions and even left to manage a physical counterpart with little or no human supervision (an AI controlled digital twin). As the popularity of digital twins grows within and across sectors, so does the interest in technology’s ability to drive business model innovation, prompting many potential adopters to wonder whether digital twins can offer innovative business models with completely new value propositions. To answer that we only need to look at recent manufacturing innovations that embraced XaaS. One example would be a digital twin operating under the Factory-as-a-Service model. The ‘smart factory’ concept allows users to purchase manufacturing and service hours instead of investing large amounts of capital in equipment. Unburdened by high investment costs and risks, manufacturers can focus on things that matter most (e.g. client satisfaction) by adapting their processes to more flexible production. Crucially, this model makes small-batch manufacturing not only possible but commercially viable, as the digital twin can easily produce customised products in any quantity required to accommodate changing demand. SmartFactory as a Service can already be seen in action today in Munich’s dynamic factory quarter. Similarly, an asset oriented digital twin operating under the Product-as-a-Service model allows users to purchase a desired outcome rather than equipment. For instance, rather than buying a robot to weld two pieces of metal, a company might instead purchase several wielding operations ad hoc. So when it comes to PaaS, products are offered via subscription along with services. In this model, what-if studies, predictive maintenance, on-demand performance analysis and simulations can be sold as a one-time service or be included in a recurring service contract. Because asset ownership is not transferred to the customer, PaaS has a huge sustainability potential. It pushes the owner to deliver a better product which can be reused, repaired, recycled and redistributed, and not simply to sell as many products as possible. From smart lighting to water pumps, the number of PaaS use cases is on the rise. Perhaps the best known example is Rolls-Royce’s TotalCare. It removes the burden of engine maintenance from the customer and transfers the management of associated risks to Rolls-Royce. Under this model, the company is responsible for proactively managing the engine through its lifecycle to achieve maximum flying availability. In doing so, it reduces waste and optimises resource efficiency, which explains why Rolls-Royce calls TotalCare a circular business model. What TotalCare and other XaaS examples show is that interoperable digital twins open up a whole range of opportunities for data-driven business models. This pioneering technology creates an important shift in value creation, which now comes less from a physical asset than from a digital twin used to service a product and optimise every step of the value chain. The Smart City Context For DUET, the main challenge with existing digital twin business models is that they largely apply to use cases in manufacturing and engineering. There is a notable lack of relevant frameworks for other sectors, including smart cities. In an attempt to fill this gap, we set out to develop a typology of local digital twins (LDTs) and their exploitation scenarios. The term LDT was recently coined by the European Commission to describe digital twins of cities, their processes, systems and assets. They operate at a larger scale but use similar advanced technologies as private-sector counterparts (e.g. cloud computing, IoT, AI) to improve the way cities are planned and managed. The term LDT is synonymous with the concept of urban digital twins, as both refer to digital twins at urban scales. LDTs offer many of the same advantages as other smart city systems. For instance, with LDTs you can get contextual information on physical assets (e.g. buildings’ energy consumption). You can measure the pulse of a city (e.g. mobility patterns) and other key trends impacting the city and its inhabitants (e.g. pollution levels, climate change). You can even optimise city’s performance by making its systems run more efficiently; an example would be the optimisation of a transport network through an AI powered control center. But what makes LDTs different compared to IoT dashboards, GIS, BIM and other tools is that they interconnect various urban data sources and modelling algorithms in a way that can grow with the city as it becomes more complex. Through this dynamic bidirectional communication link, LDTs mirror the vibrant, complex and evolving nature of its physical urban counterpart, which makes them an ideal sandbox for policy experimentation. When viewed from this angle, LDTs can provide a risk-free testing environment for simulating alternative policies to improve city management. They can reveal policies that underperform and identify leverage points for interventions that may succeed. This ex-ante evaluation function makes LDTs a coveted tool among public authorities. And while city administrations are often the main users of LDTs, there are plenty of international examples demonstrating LDT use beyond policy making. A digital twin that is open to the ecosystem can benefit other actors, too. For instance, it can help citizens experience public services better and faster, while companies can develop new products and services based on LDT data. Given these benefits, it's not surprising that interest in the LDT concept is growing. Over the years, we have witnessed more than a dozen LDTs emerging in different parts of Europe, from Paris to Stockholm, from Herrenberg to New Castle. Some of these are still in the prototype phase, but many are already operational. In the future, we can expect the LDT community to expand significantly thanks to Living-In.EU, Gaia-X, EIF4SCC and other initiatives that aim to create an enabling environment for LDTs to become mainstream. As the LDT landscape becomes more crowded, there is a need for a theoretical framework that is broad enough to capture a variety of LDT use cases, both existing and future ones. DUET’s typology is the first step in this direction, and it’s part of a bigger research on LDT business models that we intend to complete in 2022. Input for the initial stage came from knowledge accumulated during the project, as well as recently conducted primary research that involved interviews with representatives of several cities that already have a LDT or are in the process of creating one, among them Vienna, Helsinki, Rotterdam and Örebro. The Typology of LDTs When we think of business models, we tend to think of ways in which a company does business to make a financial return. A firm-level business model typically describes the value offering to a customer group and how the value is delivered to generate sustainable and profitable revenue streams. It’s much harder to conceptualise the business model at the level of smart city, where value generating activities transcend the boundaries of individual actors and even sectors. Here, a multitude of interactions taking place vertically (from organisation all the way to the ecosystem) and horizontally (e.g. B2B) enables collaborative innovation to emerge and shape the creation of public value. A collective business model that explains how value is being co-created among different actors belonging to a network therefore lends itself to the study of smart cities. And it is for this reason that we used a network-centric approach as a prism through which to examine LDTs. The application of a network-centric approach to the study of LDTs leads to several exploitation scenarios that differ according to usage and control. The former is mapped along the y-axis to denote primary LDT users and beneficiaries. The usage parameter moves from a closed model (with government being the sole user) towards an open one in which a digital twin is open to all: civil servants, residents, companies. In the latter case, benefits from LDT usage accrue to different stakeholders, generating an external value for the ecosystem. As smart cities are essentially large data ecosystems, we mapped control parameters along the x-axis to denote owners of data resources and technical infrastructure. Control can be centralised (regulated by the government) and decentralised (regulated by the ecosystem). In a decentralised environment, different actors serve as data sources. They are in control of information they hold and can set conditions for data sharing and access. This mapping resulted in a four-quadrant typology for examining LDTs, as shown in the diagram. The Typology of LDTs. Source: Authors' elaboration based on D2.4 The Closed LDT The Closed LDT represents the most centralised LDT type in our typology. It is intended as an internal decision support tool for local administration and so is not open to the ecosystem. In the Closed LDT, all data comes from government sources. Closed LDTs are initiated, managed and paid for by the government as the derived value directly benefits the city. The government controls conditions for data access and sharing. It also determines what components to use for digital twin development. Closed LDTs, although designed for internal use, are usually built using open-source software as cities generally prefer not to purchase proprietary solutions to avoid vendor lock-in. An example of the Closed LDT is Vienna’s GeoTWIN, which is currently in the prototype phase. It has been created to achieve several objectives. One is to break down data silos within government by linking different sources to the city information model e.g. GIS, census data, socioeconomic data, energy consumption data, maintenance data. Another is to aid urban planning and the development of new infrastructure projects, such as the North-West Train station area. In the case of Viena's geoTwin, the value is created internally within government in the form of improved policy making, reduced risk and enhanced urban planning, among others. The costs are covered by the GeoTWIN department using government funds. Digital geoTwin of the City of Vienna. Source: Lehner & Kordasch 2020 The Network Oriented LDT The Network Oriented LDT is a step up from the Closed LDT. In this scenario, the city initiates a digital twin project with the intention to make it available to the wider community. The cost of implementing the Network Oriented LDT is typically borne by the government. This covers the technical infrastructure, as well as the gathering and structuring of data. Given its outward orientation, the Network Oriented LDT supports decision making in the public and private sectors. As the digital twin is no longer confined to government use, the city and businesses alike can create new services using insights and data provided by the platform. Thus the Network Oriented LDT leverages public funding to open the innovation space to the ecosystem. The Helsinki Digital Twin is an example of the Network Oriented LDT. It was created by the city to spur collaboration across multiple city functions and provide a collective response to urban needs, including how to use energy resources more efficiently. In fact, one of the main applications of Helsinki’s digital twin is the Energy and Climate Atlas, which is an open web service built on a semantic city model. First published in 2018, the Atlas includes basic information on all buildings and their energy consumption. The 3D model of the city allows users to make comparative analysis to find out e.g. how much energy different buildings consume, how much solar energy can be received by different buildings. The Atlas is a useful information tool for housing companies, property developers, manufacturers of solar panels, and also citizens. The Atlas can be used by anyone, even for commercial purposes as long as the the City of Helsinki is credited as a data source. The Helsinki Digital Twin. Source: https://kartta.hel.fi/help/internet/fi/3d.html The Network Owned LDT Sitting in the top-right corner of our typology is the Network Owned LDT. It is here that we see the highest level of diffusion with regards to usage and control. Whereas other LDT types are driven by cities, the Network Owned LDT is the initiative of an ecosystem, which subsequently oversees its implementation and management, leaving the government to play an important facilitating role along with industry, science, research and civil society. The Network Owned LDT is not an exclusively city-funded project. Here, the costs are shared proportionally by actors that signed up to the initiative. Needless to say, true examples of the Network Owned LDT are hard to come by in real life, at least for now. City administrations are still the main driving force behind most urban digital twins. (Projects like DUET are an exception, but because our use cases are managed by partners representing local and regional governments, the statement about the driving force still holds true.) They are the initial innovator due to investment requirements and upfront costs. They pay for data collection and management, and decide what technology to use for digital twin development. Thus, at present, the Network Owned LDT is more an aspiration than reality. It is the next evolutionary state in the LDT maturity model that could be achieved in the future if the right conditions are in place. So what are the requirements for the Network Owned LDT? For this type of urban digital twin to emerge, we would need an open digital ecosystem where information and services from public sector, private sector, academia and citizens can be made available in a trustworthy manner. Essentially, this would have to be a federated data ecosystem of networked spaces based on agreed rules to promote interoperability. This in turn would enable data and service providers to collaborate with each other and to link, develop and further expand their offerings more easily. The good news is that efforts to develop such ecosystem are already underway. EU-level legislative developments (e.g. the Data Governance Act) and the hitherto mentioned initiatives like Gaia-X and EIF4SCC leave one sanguine about the prospect of the Network Owned LDT becoming a reality sooner than one might expect. In fact, some early signs of transition toward the Network Owned LDT can be discerned in existing urban digital twin projects. A case in point is Rotterdam. The city wants to set up a digital infrastructure to bring together local actors with a view to encouraging them to share information and services within the data ecosystem. Currently, there are some 350 different smart city initiatives that are not connected to each other. The platform would change that by interconnecting as many Rotterdam-related applications as possible through the use of open standards. As well as breaking down the silos, the final solution will help build a shared picture of reality while offering more opportunities for all (civil servants, companies, citizens) to participate in the city’s ecosystem. Rotterdam 3D. Source: https://www.3drotterdam.nl The Network Enabled LDT The Network Enabled LDT also exhibits high levels of decentralization when it comes to data and infrastructure, however its objectives are mostly policy related which makes the government a sole user of the solution. Although data comes from the ecosystem and some infrastructure is shared with the local administration, access to the actual tool and results is restricted to policy makers. The Network Enabled LDT thus represents a closed part of an otherwise open ecosystem where government can set up their own digital twin instance for private use. As with the previous type, a true Network Enabled LDT has yet to emerge in real life. Nevertheless, we noticed some manifestations of this urban twin in Örebro. The city is moving towards a linked data ecosystem (“Ett sammankopplat Örebro”) to facilitate the exchange of information on social housing, urban development, education, transport and mobility, among others. The local administration plans to combine some of this data with its own sources to improve the functioning of the city. For instance, one of the goals is to leverage sensor data, some of which is owned by private companies, to enhance road network’s performance. The expectation is that the IoT based traffic signalling system will help reduce congestion thanks to more accurate information on traffic density. A Summary of LDT Characteristics Our initial research has shown that existing LDTs differ according to levels of control and usage. The least open types are the Closed LDT and the Network Enabled LDT. Being policy oriented, their main purpose is to support decision making within local government. These digital twins are not available to the ecosystem although sometimes it provides data to supplement governmental sources. The most open types are the Network Owned LDT and the Network Oriented LDT. These digital twins are accessible to the ecosystem and so create opportunities for actors other than policy makers to benefit from LDT data, for example by creating new services (companies) or becoming more engaged in democratic life (citizens). Today, pretty much all LDTs are government-led projects, which leaves true ecosystem owned or enabled examples in the realm of future possibilities. One might argue that this status quo will continue into the future. For us, however, the question about whether the two decentralised types will emerge is not a matter of if but when. The reason for our cautious confidence: several EU initiatives (Gaia-X, DGA etc.) that aim to establish open, interoperable cross-domain digital ecosystems in which data and services can be shared between providers in a trusted and secure manner to create new value propositions. Our typology identified four LDT scenarios but it stops short of prescribing which one is best for what city. The choice clearly depends on local needs and priorities, on data that has to be included and the desired maturity level of a digital twin. For some cities, the Network Owned LDT will be a natural target determined by recent progress in data governance. For those that simply want to enhance urban planning, the Closed LDT may be a more appropriate option. It’s also worth noting that LDTs are not mutually exclusive. A local authority may decide to have one for internal purposes and another one with different functionalities for the wider public. Importantly, various LDTs can coexist, reinforcing each other and perhaps acting as parts of a bigger digital twin linking other cities in the same country and even across borders. To test its robustness and usefulness, we will be mapping more cities onto our framework in the coming months. In parallel, we are going to start the second phase of our research on LDT business models, where the main focus will be on exploring the commercialisation potential of different LDT types. As part of this, we will be investigating whether LDT stakeholders can benefit from cloud business models like XaaS in the same way as stakeholders in manufacturing do. If you have an opinion on that, let us know in the comments below. Authors: Ruben D'Hauwers (imec-SMIT-VUB), Pavel Kogut (21c Consultancy)

DUET project partners from Plan4All developed a Proof-of-Concept traffic model for the Flemish city of Bruges. The team obtained road network data from OpenStreetMap to create a traffic model and then deployed it in the TraMod environment to demonstrate the prototype's suitability for operations planning. The results were created as part of the Open Spring INSPIRE Hackathon that ran from March until June 2021. Challenge 10 of the latest Inspire Hackathon sought to assess OSM’s suitability for traffic modeling purposes. The aim was to find out whether an OSM-derived street network can be used to create a low-cost traffic model which can then be deployed on a server for use by the Traffic Modeller software. To that end, the team followed a five-step process as outlined below. Methodology First, a well defined and topologically correct road network was acquired. The final structure describes the allowed movements within a modelled area of interest, and is meant to make the OSM road network routable, as well as to allow the import of prohibited turns on junctions. Second, traffic generators representing the supply and demand of car trips in the road network were acquired. Traffic generators have to be connected to one of the network junctions. The number of car trips may come from different demographic sources and should reflect various local parameters such as the number of residents, number of schools and accessibility of public transport. The team took a very rough estimation of the traffic generator’s volume, calculated from the area of a building and the amount of average trips generated by each building. The buildings were then aggregated to the nearest junction and visualised using Voronoi diagrams (see figure). The diagrams were later clustered to reach a significant volume for each generator. Number of trips per zones in the center of Bruges center (gray color represents buildings and roads, red color - traffic generators areas, centroids and trip numbers) The next step is to calculate the origin-destination matrix. The OD matrix consists of cells representing the number of car trips from the origin (row) to the destination zone (column). This shows the distribution of the aforementioned supply and domain of traffic generators across the network. In step four, the OD matrix was assigned to the city street network, while in the last step, traffic was calibrated. The calibration process uses measurements of traffic volumes to confront and adjust the calculated traffic model to the observed reality. Traffic measurements (also called traffic census) are usually acquired at neuralgic points of the traffic network. The data for such a traffic census can be gathered by various sources (e.g. ANPR cameras, built-in road sensors). However, the team was not able to reach a dense enough set of such calibration points. Therefore they used only a general calibration based on the total number of inhabitants in Bruges. For this reason, the absolute numbers of cars displayed in the resulting models can vary from the actual traffic. However the general shape and behavior of the model seems promising and when there is better calibration data available, recalibration should be easy to implement. Results The team successfully imported data from OSM into the traffic model and then deployed it as a stand-alone application in the TraMod environment. In the prototype application, road closure scenarios can be experimented with to see changes in traffic compared to the original situation. Simulated traffic conditions can even be explored at the level of particular streets, with red colour representing a potential increase in traffic. Additionally, users can add custom events (e.g. complete closure, partial restriction) and simulate their impact on traffic. Watch the video to see how this works. If you would like to test the Bruges app yourself, or to discuss how to build a low-cost traffic model for your city, don’t hesitate to get in touch with members of the TraMod team here.

Global Forum/Shaping the Future is a leading think tank on digital issues. It offers strategic insight and promotes dialogue and networking to support the development of common visions and partnerships. It held a pre-conference webinar on June 9th 2021 to discuss important topics that should feature on the agenda of its annual conference in December. Attended by a global audience of smart city practitioners, academics and innovative SME's the webinar provided a unique opportunity to horizon scan the urban technology landscape and better understand the new concepts and tools that will shortly be reshaping society. DUET project partner, Hugo Kerschot of IS-Practice took the opportunity to present the concept of Digital Twins for smarter city decision making by outlining the history leading to the adoption of these technologies, from basic points-of-interest mapping, through to a more complex and systemic way to view and understand policy impact. Hugo argued that whilst cities are eager to step-up to the technological plate and deliver increasing benefits for residents and visitors, the age-old challenge of data access and quality is still a real struggle. DUET with its innovative T-Cell architecture for data brokerage and interoperability can help show data owners the value of a more inclusive approach. The discussion will be continued at the annual conference. To learn more about Global Forum please checkout their website. Their next conference is planned to take place in Oman on the 6th and 7th December this year.

Workshop to be held adjacent to the IEEE Smart Cities Conference (ISC2) 2021 Submission deadline June 30, 2021 More details here and submission via the EDAS site. Today, citizens can rely on applications to predict the fastest route from point A to B or consult personalized apps to suggest the best activity for a night out. City administrations and local communities also benefit from the increased predictability of urban processes and change, for example by relying on digital twins. While these systems help to reduce search costs or insecurities, they might fall prey to merely repeating historic patterns found in the data. How can we ensure that these applications still allow for serendipitous encounters instead of resulting in 'urban filter bubbles'? And to what extent current practices of data collection and predictive modeling are capable of dealing with uncertainties and unexpected events. Especially in the contemporary urban context, where resilience plays an important role, it is crucial that decision-makers are able to deal with the unexpected and not blinded by patterns from the past. This workshop is open to all parties interested in discussing serendipity in the smart city. We welcome contributions from academics, innovators, local governments, and practitioners. The topics of interest of this workshop include, but are not limited to: Ethical implications of predictive systems in a smart city Design principles for systems that engender urban serendipity Applications of personalization in smart cities Bias and inequalities in urban data User evaluations of urban serendipity Governance models of urban serendipity Business models for urban serendipity Volunteered geographic information to encourage data diversity Predictive and pattern modelling on open linked data (Open) data management Digital twin applications for predictive analysis Research papers reporting original results as well as position papers proposing novel and ground-breaking ideas pertaining to the workshop topics are solicited. Accepted papers will be published in IEEE ISC2 conference proceedings.

DUET project was a proud supporter of the 2021 STEAM Discovery Campaign. After the campaign has closed and the results were announced, the #Scientix team reported a record number of participants. Over 2,000 activities were registered engaging 9,000 schools and 22,000 teachers with the Competitions and activities reaching over 117,000 students in total coming from over 40 countries. DUET will continue to support STEM education and will remain fully commited to this initiative. More info on the results of the 2021 STEM Discovery campaign can be found here.