Picture of the Eiffel Tower in Paris with the Paris metro running in front of it and a header with logos of BMWSB, GIZ and BBSR
Built upon picture from user DRX from Wikimedia Commons under CC.A.SA 3.0

Final on-site meeting of #connectedinEurope in Paris

On 16 September 2024, a day before the 4th OECD Roundtable on Smart Cities and Inclusive Growth, the participating cities of the #connectedinEurope programme of the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building met in Paris for their final on-site meeting. A packed agenda encompassed specific discussion points on datasets and digital twins, the summary of exchange activities and a collection of next steps for after the programme.

09/20/2024

Main content

cybersecurity, standardisation & data sovereignty data visualisation digital infrastructure digital participation tools digital twin digital urban planning sensors & LoRaWan

With the Olympic Games, Paris was one of the capitals of European and international competition this year. In this spirit, the final on-site meeting of #connectedinEurope in Paris began with a joyful guessing and collection of the European competitions that happened or will be happening soon in in each city. Already from this icebreaker a rich diversity of events emerged which was foreshadowing the multi-faceted and rich character of the ensuing exchange. The group witnessed then two insightful inputs from the cities of Krefeld and Amsterdam. Krefeld presented in more detail their process steps for automating the translation of weather data into more granular heat warnings and sending them in a targeted manner. This was deemed necessary because the temperature difference within the city can be up to five degrees and too many “false alarms” increase the risk of warnings being neglected by citizens altogether. At the moment they are still in the beta version but other cities in the round already raised their interest for receiving the documentation when soon ready.

Group of people sitting at a roundtable and a laptop showing the agenda of the event in the foreground
GIZ

Amsterdam then continued with their presentation on the status quo of providing High Value Datasets (HVD) in the context of Digital Twins and specifically the Dutch programme “3D Bag”. To date 3D Bag provides the most detailed model on country level in three dimensions of semantic buildings and is a freely and publicly available dataset. It builds on a central data fundament in the Netherlands of all buildings and serves already several purposes of visualization or as input variables. But Amsterdam also highlighted that there is further room to improve the updating frequencies of the available data and for higher levels of detail.

This led to the first major discussion point: “What level of detail should be aspired in digital twins, and for which uses?” Shade simulations or detailed calculations of solar potential requires a more detailed shape of roofs. On the other hand, many calculations of traffic flows are often indifferent to exact shapes and characteristics of buildings.
In any case, many cities indicated that there could be still better organization and alignment of complementary processes of HVD provision in their administrations as is warranted by recent EU regulation.

Discussion point 1: “What level of detail should be aspired in digital twins, and for which uses?”

Slide with typologies of digital twin diffusion from national or regional or municipal levels
GIZ

Next, the secretariat of the International Smart Cities Network (ISCN) gave a small input on international practices, notably PLATEAU, the national digital twin initiative from Japan. Further, as an addition to the “Dutch” and “German model”, a typology was proposed for different strategies of country-wide digital twin development, leading to the next discussion point (fig.1):
“What are the best diffusion and scaling paths for digital twin solutions within countries and across regions?” Several cities in the round expressed their general preference for a more centralized lead of national levels for digital twin infrastructure and components. On the other hand, it became clear that in any scenario further progress is possible and developments can grow together as a focus on open source and interoperability prevents rigid path-dependencies.

Discussion point 2: “What are the best diffusion and scaling paths for digital twin solutions within countries and across regions?”

After these technical sessions, it was time to get practical. In a brief breakout session, the tandems and tridems came together and discussed next steps and further threads for the topical focusses of their exchanges, also with reference to forthcoming funding calls of the EU here and here. They then proceeded to give summaries of their exchange activities and project focusses, such as the testing of interoperability and replication potential of digital twins, robotics and LoRaWan sensoring, the linking of open data platforms, smart city participation modes or cross-border data sharing in a common Data Space. To this, some cities added inputs on other current smart city activities in their city proper.

Lastly, BBSR outlined the status quo of the accompanying research, of which the last publication is expected for the beginning of next year.

Several participants testified that for them #connectedinEurope was indeed true to its name and highlighted the valuable networking opportunities and learnings that emerged from the programme. Most cities are keen on staying in contact and further progress on the jointly identified smart city focusses and several cities are already well positioned to continue their projects in the context of future programs and to anchor their results and documentations in suitable platforms for replicators.

You want further information about #connectedinEurope? Feel free to contact us at iscn@giz.de.

 

Group foto of about 30 participants at the event on stairs in front of a little castle
GIZ