Digital twins will make the cities of the future greener and more democratic

The image is generated with AI.

A collaborative project called CITWIN with Danish, Belgian, Swedish and Austrian partners will use digital twins in the future of urban planning. By presenting infrastructure changes to citizens in a virtual representation of the city, urban development is made more democratic. Ultimately, the goal of the project is to create greener, more rationally designed and welcoming cities. Innovation Fund Denmark is investing 2.6 million DKK in the project's Danish partners.

In the city of the future, all daily necessities should be within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. This is the vision behind the European project CITWIN, which will reduce the number of cars in cities and bring citizens closer to urban planning.

Lukas Esterle is an associate professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Aarhus University and is also the university's project manager for the European innovation project CITWIN. For him, reducing our dependence on cars in cities is crucial:

"Cars create a need for wider roads and require space for parking spaces in cities – often at the expense of human considerations. In addition, as is well known, they are neither climate nor environmentally friendly, even if they are electric," says Lukas Esterle.

He goes on to say that he would like to see a future with car-free cities, but that cars are such an integral part of our lives today that it will take a lot of innovation and restructuring of the infrastructure to get there. However, it can be difficult to calculate the consequences of these restructurings, so to overcome this problem, CITWIN uses so-called digital twins:

- Digital twins are a technology that is very up-to-date and has an incredible number of applications. In our specific project, we have created interactive, virtual copies of cities like Aarhus, says Lukas Esterle.

You should imagine a Google Maps-like interface with simulated traffic moving through the city's streets and alleys in real time. The smart thing about this digital twin is that you can make traffic changes by, for example, closing a road and in this way follow how the traffic adapts. The digital twin will therefore act as a virtual test center for the municipality's urban planners, saving citizens from inconvenience in the real world. And for the project manager from Aarhus University, there is also a democratic point in the cities' digital twin:

- In the long term, the digital twin can be made into an open platform that city residents can access. They would then be able to click into specific areas of the city and provide the authorities with feedback on their proposed changes.

The digital twin will be continuously updated based on real-world data. For example, stations in different locations around the city will record the number of cyclists and synchronize with the virtual model.

Aarhus Municipality

Aarhus Municipality has been part of the project as a use case, which has given the project's partners from the research world insights into how the technology can be implemented in practice. Gustav Friis works daily for Aarhus Municipality's Technology and Environment Department and has been project manager at CITWIN. According to him, it has been very rewarding for the city's officials to be able to spar with researchers and partners from Denmark and abroad.

- Overall, it has been exciting to get close to the research world, and we very much hope to reach a point where we can use the digital twin to involve citizens in urban planning. Democratization of data is super important to us in Aarhus Municipality, says Gustav Friis.

He explains that the municipality's role in CITWIN has primarily been to collect data for the research partners' various models. During the life of the project, Aarhus Municipality has visited the partners in Belgium and Sweden. In this way, the exchange of knowledge across countries has been a significant additional benefit of participating in the project.

International partners

CITWIN is part of an EU initiative called Driving Urban Transition to a sustainable future (DUT), which aims to promote research and innovation that accelerates the transformation of cities towards climate neutrality and sustainability. The project is led by a number of European partners, of which Innovation Fund Denmark is funding the two Danish ones from Aarhus University and Aarhus Municipality. In addition, universities from Belgium, Sweden and Austria are also represented in the consortium, as well as a Swedish municipality, an Austrian company and the European interest organization European Cyclists' Federation.

For Lukas Esterle, there is a lot of value in collaborating across countries and sectors:

- The whole idea of a project like this is to bring together experts from different backgrounds. The Swedes, for example, are experts in traffic simulation. In Austria, they have developed a sophisticated way of measuring how traffic-friendly cities are for cyclists and pedestrians. And the Belgian partner is very keen on measuring the general welfare and well-being of city dwellers.

Unlike previous similar projects that have only been developed for specific cities, it is an essential part of CITWIN's vision to be able to adapt their digital twin to cities all over the world.

Facts

• Innovation Fund's investment: DKK 2,553,800.
• Total budget: DKK 11,414,717.
• Duration: 2023 - 2027
• Program: International Collaborations – DUT (Driving Urban Transition to a sustainable future)
• Official title: CITWIN (a portmanteau of 'city' and 'twin')

About the partners

Denmark is represented in CITWIN by Aarhus University and Aarhus Municipality. In addition, the University of Liège, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, the University of Salzburg, the Municipality of Eskilstuna, the company Triply and the interest organization European Cyclists' Federation are also members.