Musaa Oy

SCDT links and a summary of the project where Micce had the role of coordinating company cooperation, describing the modular software and data aspects parts.

From Distinct Concepts Towards Integrated Socio-Technical Applications

FFRC eBooks 2/2024, Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku

ISBN 978-952-249-613-3, ISSN 1797-1322

In the research-based e-book report of the Smart City Digital Twins (SCDTs) project, we have provided different conceptualization approaches on Smart City and Digital Twins, then attempt to merge those varying concept-lines with general guidelines for data management and knowledge management. It was a difficult task to bring together the smart city and the digital twin concepts into one common denominator. Smart cities can be defined as socio-technical urban systems. Cities are a social system with dynamics of people, goods, culture, biodiversity, sustainability, and creativity. Technical systems of these complex social system require intense technological infrastructures. Thus, the collection, extraction, consistency of the data in smart cities as socio-technical systems should ensure city planners, businesses, people to make current and future-oriented informed-decisions by considering all the urban data within cities. Further, this requires more data management and the integration of data sets into real urban planning processes. The essential challenge is the integration of data/information systems concerning each other and the development of systemic entities in cooperation with expert groups and experts from different professional areas of urban planning.

The concept of digital twins can be considered only if smart city reaches essential maturity, because digital twins, with their basic definition, are the real-time replication of a process, product and systems in digital environments. In this regard, various feasible frameworks and methods have been presented whether a city’s smart city initiatives have sufficient maturity e.g., for digital twin integration. Maturity of smart city and its systemic urban planning entities can be examined from the Smart City Wheel framework, as shown in the research report.

Also, in this final report, we identified ten key challenges of the co-creation of smart cities and digital twins and presented them in the following Policy Brief section. Often these dossiers have been developed in isolation, which is a problematic approach in many ways. This was also an important strategic issue and a key challenge for the Smart City Digital Twins project.

This publication is the final report of the Smart City Digital Twins project, which includes the following topics. In Chapter 1, we motivate the readers of our report on the different themes of Smart City Digital Twins development activities. The Smart City Digital Twins challenge affects all public sector and urban developers, as well as businesses and industry, the academic research community, and civil society actors (i.e. the so-called “Digital Twins”). Quadruple Helix stakeholders). In Chapter 2, we introduce readers to the content discussion of both Smart City and Digital Twin concepts and recent scientific developments in the field. In this context, we see that scientific research today provides a strong case for the development of smart cities and digital twins. In Chapter 3, we provide a methodological overview of the foresight and urban planning methods used during the project, which were also piloted in the project. In Chapter 3 Boyd Cohen’s Smart City Wheel approach is introduced and data collection/management framework of urban city studies is explained. In Chapter 3, we also explain Benchmarking, Bench-learning, and Bench-action Process approach, participatory hybrid foresight framework, and applied case study framework of cities. In Chapter 4, we report insights into smart city digital twins’ development from urban case studies (Turku, Gdańsk, Wrocław, and Vilnius). Insights are based on qualitative and quantitative analyses.  In Chapter 5, conclusive remarks and reflections are presented.