June 4, 2024
In this blog article, we look at how urban digital twins can help municipalities to become more future-proof and crisis-proof, i.e. more resilient. To do this, we look at several use cases that were successfully realized and implemented as part of the “TwinBy – Digital Twins for Bavaria” project within the last year and answer the most important questions on the topic: What are Urban Digital Twins? ? (UDZ) What impact can they have for municipalities? And what added value could the municipalities generate through the use of such digital tools?
Whether small, medium-sized or large municipalities, they all face various social, political and ecological challenges that need to be overcome in the coming years. Added to this is a tight financial situation, a shortage of skilled workers and very slow progress in digitalization. The introduction and use of UDCs therefore initially seems like a drop in the ocean to many local authorities. But to what extent are UDCs instead proving to be a hot potato that can help overcome the aforementioned challenges?
What exactly is an “urban digital twin”?
UDCs are virtual representations of urban environments that reflect real physical structures (e.g. streets or buildings) and processes (e.g. traffic flows or supply and disposal processes) in a digital platform and exchange information between the physical structures (e.g. building information) and the virtual representation at regular intervals, preferably at short notice (cf. VanDerHorn and Mahadevan, 2021). Simulations and analyses are automatically generated based on static and dynamic data in order to depict the current state of the physical environment as accurately as possible and to model possible future scenarios. By integrating diverse urban, often geo-based data, UDCs can bundle a wide range of information and present it virtually for decision-makers and citizens.
So much for the theory – however, in addition to a lack of financial and human resources, local authorities often simply lack the necessary technical expertise and convincing practical use cases that can justify implementation both internally and externally. Against this backdrop, the Bavarian State Ministry for Digital Affairs launched a funding project at the beginning of 2023 with the aim of supporting Bavarian municipalities in building up knowledge and implementing their own UDCs. The “TwinBy – Digital Twins for Bavaria” project started in April 2023 with a total of 18 funded projects, including small and medium-sized municipalities (e.g. Markt Weisendorf, Pressath and Haar) as well as several associations (e.g. NordAllianz, the district of Kulmbach or the two municipalities of Deggendorf and Plattling). The project was managed by the Bavarian innovation company “Bayern Innovativ”. The companies Virtual City Systems, CADFEM and CreativeClimateCities were responsible for building up the knowledge of the funding recipients and jointly developed an in-depth technical qualification program on the topic of “urban digital twins”. The companies DKSR, ui! and aconium provided the technical expertise and, in some cases, the core technologies for implementing the respective UDCs – based largely on open source. The project emphasized technological openness, and the municipalities were able to work with their existing systems as well as a mix of solutions from the consortium participants and/or third parties, depending on their individual circumstances. Within one year – with an average budget of around 50,000 euros per funded project – various local challenges were identified, numerous use cases were developed (e.g. in the areas of environment, energy, mobility, urban and construction planning, health and culture) and 17 digital twins were implemented.
One key finding? UDCs can be constructed in different ways, depending on the use case, the available technologies and the needs of the users. For example, 3D visualizations are a common component of such twins, enabled by the integration of three-dimensional models of buildings or the local topography into the data basis. 3D visualizations can be displayed in specialized software applications or browser-based tools, for example with the help of the open source tool “Masterportal” and enable particularly precise hazard forecasts in the context of severe weather scenarios.
Which use cases were implemented as part of TwinBy?
One municipality that has chosen this form of 3D visualization is the city of Schwabach. It has developed a use case for heat resilience and disaster prevention in which planning and sensor data (e.g. real-time data from heat sensors, data from water stations and evaluation data from its adopted climate concept) are integrated into its twin. This identifies and visualizes heat islands, i.e. places where heat builds up in the city. With the implementation of its UDZ, the municipality also pursued the goal of visualizing potential flood areas and developing an evacuation plan in order to be able to react quickly in the event of a disaster. The municipality used both DKSR’s urban data platform (OUP) and a 3D software application (master portal) to aggregate and visualize the (real-time) data. With the help of the UDZ, Schwabach was able to gain a better understanding of local heat islands and plan climate adaptation measures, such as greening, in a more targeted manner. On the other hand, the implemented use case creates transparency for citizens, who can find out about current temperature trends, cool areas in the city and available water sources.
As an alternative or in addition to 3D visualizations, UDZ can also be displayed in the form of interactive dashboards. These are primarily used to visualize real-time data and process it directly in the form of analyses. One municipality that used this form of visualization as part of the TwinBy project is Feldkirchen. The municipality was faced with the challenge of having little knowledge of its own consumption values and energy balances of municipal properties. A solution was therefore sought to make the consumption values and balances of the Feldkirchen town hall visible and controllable. For this reason, various data (including KNX data, electricity consumption data as well as room and occupancy plans) were bundled and visualized in a Grafana dashboard. In a further expansion stage, the data will be analyzed and electricity consumption in the town hall will be intelligently controlled. In addition, live occupancy data is to be made available via an app and used to improve the building’s room utilization. The building control system not only helps the municipality to better understand the energy balance of the town hall, but also to make decisions for more efficient building management. In addition, the use case can also improve climate protection and the carbon footprint by optimizing the use and potential of renewable energy and reducing consumption. This enables the municipality not only to reduce costs, but also to operate with maximum efficiency in the long term.
The UDZ of the town of Forchheim is also exciting. The town has been suffering from high traffic volumes for years. This means that certain traffic axes are bottlenecks that produce congestion, noise and unnecessary exhaust fumes. The city’s use case therefore focused on evaluating and analyzing floating car data. Using a traffic spider and the source-destination analysis method, a static analysis of traffic behavior was carried out on the basis of a Python script; the results were then exported and integrated into the UDZ. The integration of the data and the holistic analysis of traffic flows now enables the municipality to make better decisions in the area of municipal traffic planning, to minimize the volume of traffic at bottleneck locations and to reduce environmental and noise pollution.
More resilience through urban digital twins
These examples show that UDCs are capable of addressing municipal challenges within a short period of time and generating social, economic and ecological benefits for municipalities in the long term. The three use cases presented make it clear that municipal resilience can be created primarily through the intelligent use, evaluation and visualization of a wide variety of data sources. Urban digital twins are powerful tools that can make not only reality but also the future more tangible. If municipalities can show how they are doing in areas such as heat, flooding, traffic volumes or energy consumption, they are also in a position to make informed (and above all faster and therefore more cost-effective) decisions that have a positive impact on urban planning, traffic management or environmental and climate protection, i.e. the quality of life of citizens.
For many local authorities, however, the financing and technical implementation of an UDZ remains the crucial question. The only solution is to gradually expand internal inventory systems, keep an eye out for funding programs such as TwinBy and benefit from the implementation experience and findings of other municipalities for their own projects. Municipalities can already access the TwinBy project’s metadata catalog, in which all information on the implemented use cases can be found. The implementation of 17 urban digital twins as part of TwinBy has shown: We are not at the end, but at the beginning of a new twin era.
The digital twin from Schwabach presented in the article has been nominated for the Federal “Blue Compass”the highest state award for climate adaptation measures. The award is presented by the Federal Ministry for the Environment together with the Federal Environment Agency for dealing with climate impacts such as heat, drought and heavy rainfall. The public vote for the Community Award for the city of Schwabach can be cast here until June 18.