City managers and policy-makers face challenges in delivering effective urban change due to the complex nature of city processes and systems. Local Digital Twins (LDTs) disrupt siloed policy-making by enabling systemic impact exploration and experimentation with new ideas across virtual replicas of cities and regions. The session will engage cities interested in LDTs to raise awareness of the Commission’s policy, clarify the concept, and identify what capacity-building needs they have.

Local Digital Twins (LDTs) are a disruptive concept with untapped potential to achieve the goals of the European Green Deal and the Commission’s digital ambitions, allowing for greater co-creation with citizens. The Commission plans to enable cities/regions to create their LDTs, with funding allocated for the development of technical aspects. The session will include a presentation by two cities, who will explain their journey, covering how they decided to use a digital twin, what enablers they put in place (technological and governance-related) and what their main challenges have been. This will be followed by small group discussions on what capacity they would need to build to be able to embark on such a journey. Coming back from the breakout session, a Sli.do will capture the main training needs listed. As a conclusion, LEAD and DUET partners will briefly present their (planned) capacity building programmes.

The session aims to address the following questions:

1. What are Local Digital Twins? How can both small and medium-sized and larger cities benefit from them?
2. What are the steps needed for the planning, design, and implementation of Digital Twins in cities?
3. What are the main challenges and potential for the implementation of Digital Twins?
4. How can Capacity Building empower cities in this endeavour?

Draft agenda:

• Setting the scene, by Andrea Halmos, Policy Officer, DG Connect – European Commission
• Stories from the ground: experience of a city from the LEAD and DUET projects
  • Sergio Fernández Balaguer, Coordinator of the Research and Innovation Projects Department at EMT Madrid,
  • Jiri Bouchal, EU Projects Manager at InnoConnect, Pilsen, Czech Republic
• Breakout sessions: discussions in small groups about training/capacity building needs
• Capacity building for the deployment of Local Digital Twins
  • Claudia Ribeiro, Project Officer, POLIS Network and leader of Capacity Building
  • Lieven Raes, Adviser, Digitaal Vlaanderen
• Conclusions

You can register for the European Week of Regions and Cities here. Once you have registered, you can sign up for this workshop here.