No longer hype, not yet mainstream? Recalibrating city digital twins' expectations and reality: a case study perspective

Abstract

While the concept of digital twin has already consolidated in industry, its spinoff in the urban environment—in the form of a City Digital Twin (CDT)—is more recent. A CDT is a dynamic digital model of the physical city whereby the physical and the digital are integrated in both directions, thus mutually affecting each other in real time. Replicating the path of smart cities, literature remarks that agendas and discourses around CDTs remain (1) tech-centered, that is, focused on overcoming technical limitations and lacking a proper sociotechnical contextualization of digital twin technologies; (2) practice-first, entailing hands-on applications without a long-term strategic governance for the management of these same technologies. Building on that, the goal of this article is to move beyond high-level conceptualizations of CDT to (a) get a cognizant understanding of what a CDT can do, how, and for whom; (b) map the current state of development and implementation of CDTs in Europe. This will be done by looking at three case studies—Dublin, Helsinki, and Rotterdam—often considered as successful examples of CDTs in Europe. Through exiting literature and official documents, as well as by relying on primary interviews with tech experts and local officials, the article explores the maturity of these CDTs, along the Gartner's hype-mainstream curve of technological innovations. Findings show that, while all three municipalities have long-term plans to deliver an integrated, cyber-physical real-time modeling of the city, currently their CDTs are still at an early stage of development. The focus remains on technical barriers—e.g., integration of different data sources—overlooking the societal dimension, such as the systematic involvement of citizens. As for the governance, all cases embrace a multistakeholder approach; yet CDTs are still not used for policymaking and it remains to see how the power across stakeholders will be distributed in terms of access to, control of, and decisions about CDTs.