Digital Twins for Cities

Online Seminar Series

Digital Twins are rapidly emerging in many disciplines and across sectors, including the built environment. Recent technological advancements make it possible to simulate, predict, and visualize the pulse of the cities to make more informed decisions.

Many municipalities in the world started their Digital Twin journey and begin to explore the benefits of the technology for developing sustainable and liveable cities and regions. Yet, there are still many challenges to scale up Digital Twins and create value for citizens, businesses, and public officials.

In order to address these challenges, but also to highlight the opportunities, we would like to invite you to a webinar series on Digital Twins for cities. In a series of 6 episodes international experts will provide an overview of the global Digital Twin city landscape and will deep dive in a number of key areas.

 

Initiatives from around the world

10th March, 12:15 -13:30 (GMT+1)    Sign up here

In recent years, more and more cities are looking to apply the Digital Twin concept to a specific district or the entire city. Often large public and private investments have been made to support the developmentof Digital Twins in collaboration between academia, municipalities, and industry. In the first seminar we will take a closer look at 3 major initiatives from the United Kingdom, the Unites States and Australia and discuss different approaches to boost the creation and utilisation of Digital Twins.

 

Alexandra Bolton

Executive Director, Centre for Digital Built Britan, UK 

 

 

 

Dan Isaacs

Vice President, Digitla Twin Consortium, USA

 

 

 

Adam Beck 

Executive Director, Smart Cities Council Australia and New Zeland. 

 

 

Moderator: Bernd Ketzler 

Scientific Coordinator, Digital Twin Cities Centre, Chalmers University of Technology. 

 

 

 

Business and Revenue Models

17th March, 12:30 -13:30 (GMT+1)  Sign up here

With more and more data being shared, the deployment of Digital Twins offers the chance to create new businessand revenue models.Yet, there is a lot of uncertainty about the status and future development of the digital twin market in the built environment. In this seminar, we will discuss the level of maturity and development pathways for Digital Twins, as well as different stakeholder interests and bottlenecks.

 

Ken Dooley

Chief Strategy Officer, Haltian

 

 

Rafael Sacks

Associate Professor of Contruction Management, Technion Israel Institute of Technology.

 

 

 

Nicolas Waern

CEO & Founder, WINNIIO

 

 

 

Moderator: Lina Vicsai

Market Director Ramboll, and Chair Digital Twin Cities Centre. 

 

Organisational and legal challenges

24th March, 12:30 -13:30 (GMT+1)  Sign up here

Many initiatives highlight the large potential of Digital Twins but fail to address obvious organisational or legal risks and liabilities of sharing data, connecting individual twins, location privacy, harmonising licenses, intellectual property rights, GDPR and many more. For Digital Twins to be trustworthy and efficient it is crucial to appropriately tackle these challenges. In this session, we will focus on some of the major organisational and legal issues when building and operating Digital Twins.

 

Sarah Rock

Principal Associate, Gowling WLG.

 

 

 

Roland Van Der Hejden

Programme Manager, Digital City Rotterdam

 

 

 

Jaan Saar

Head of Digital Construction, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, Estonia. 

 

 

 

Moderator: Christina Claeson-Jonsson

Head of R&D, NCC. 

Security risks and challenges

14th April, 12:30 -13:30 (GMT+1)  Sign up here

Using digital twins as authoritative platforms and decision-making tools have many benefits. However, security risks and challenges are major concerns and need to be addressed to achieve business resilience and public acceptance. In this session we will discuss some critical security risks and challenges and present examples on how security issues can be solved.

 

Juanjo Hierro

Chief Technology Officer, FIWARE Foundation

 

 

 

Leonidas Kallipolitis

Technical Manager, AEGIS IT RESEARCH

 

 

 

Anett Numa

Digital Transformation Adviser, e-Estonia Briefing Centre

 

 

 

 

Moderator: Graham Kemp

Professor at the Data Science and AI division, Chalmers University

 

 Opportunities for Civic Engagement

21st April, 12:30 -13:30 (GMT+1)  Sign up here

Digital Twins are often referred to as means to enable civic engagement and participation. Their visualization and interaction capabilities can bring people with different backgrounds together. Yet, use-cases with meaningful impact are difficult to find. In this seminar, we will show examples of how Digital Twins can engage communities and discuss the value of Digital Twins in the context of civic engagement.

 

David Craig Weir-McCall

AEC Business Development Manager - Unreal Engine Enterprise at Epic Games

 

 

 

Fabian Dembski

Professor of Digital Participatory City Planning, Tallinn University of Technology

 

 

 

Charlie Gullström

Research and Innovation Strategist, Sweco Architects

 

 

 

Moderator: Viktoria Walldin

Anthropologist and Partner, White Arkitekter

 

Seminar 6 -Digital Twins for Cities: Opportunities for Circularity, 28.04., 12:30 -13:30

Opportunities for Circularity

28th April, 12:30 -13:30 (GMT+1)  Sign up here

The lifecycle perspective of Digital Twins and ability to track and mange assets can enable circular economies and concepts. In the built environment Digital Twins may support the management of material resources through many lifecycles and help us to understand complex trade-offs that are required between sectors – for example, to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. In this seminar, we will address the capabilities that make Digital Twins valuable enablers for circularity. We will look at practical use-cases and discuss shortcomings.  

 

Mark Enzer

Head of the National Digital Twin Programme, Centre for Digital Built Britain

 

 

 

Khadija Benis

Research Associate, c5Lab

 

 

 

Chris Jackson

Head of Commercial Markets & Sustainability, Esri UK

 

 

 

Moderator: Andreas Hanning

Project Manager Circular Economy, Chalmers Industriteknik