Twin4Resilience

In March 2024, the Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) project Twin4Resilience (T4R) commenced. For the coming 3,5 years, HKU will be cooperating in this project with 13 other partners on the development and implementation of a collective strategy and 8 different pilot projects. HKU is also involved in the development of a train-the-trainer educational programme with – and for – local, regional and national authorities, the general public, higher-education institutions, interest groups, and NGO’s, together with small and medium businesses.

Twin4Resilience

A digital twin (LDT) in 3D of the city or neighbourhood, helps both policy makers and citizens to better understand what the spatial planning could look like in the context of the grand societal challenges we are facing together, such as climate, energy, housing and green cities.

In the green and digital transition, local and regional governments are confronted with an ever-more complex decision-making environment for spatial planning. To bring about resilience and a proper living standard, local and regional governments require systemic innovation and decision processes.

LDT's are virtual 2D or 3D representations of a given territory, such as a city. They are created by modelling and simulation technology based on datasets and data models. LDTs are the building blocks of systemic innovation. Currently, LDT technology and high-quality datasets are even available for communities with lower budgets. Many cities are already experimenting with LDTs. However, the characteristics and maturity of their experiments vary greatly. Their development and application are hampered by a lack of understanding of what an LDT is and how they can help in spatial planning. This results in a lack of evidence for the impact of LDTs, and therefore a lack of political support for their use, which leads to fewer means to increase innovational capacity – especially with the government.

The European project Twin4Resilience (T4R) is not concerned with the development of the technology, but with increasing the capacity of people (and thus of policy and governance) to properly handle transitions. T4R will drastically increase the research and innovation capacities of more than 130 organisations, enabling them to better deal with complex challenges in the field of spatial planning.

The goals of Twin4Resilience

IIn T4R, partners are collaborating towards the following goals:
• Create more skills and competencies among civil servants, companies involved with spatial development and planning, and citizens, and more awareness of the opportunities and limitations of LDTs.
• Increase the number of local and regional governments that use LDTs in an inclusive, democratic, affordable and sustainable way in their decision processes, thereby increasing their resilience and improving living standards.
• Narrowing the gap between cities that implement LDTs (early adopters), those who try to do this (followers) and those who are not (yet) aware of the potential of LDTs.

Development of HKU's train-the-trainer programme

HKU and its project partners will establish a collective learning- and capacity-increasing programme, based on the European framework for life-long learning called ESCO (European Skills, Competences, and Occupations). This entails the development of micro credentials, which are small modular educational units that can be delivered in various contexts, such as the work floor or community centres, as well as in more informal contexts.

Twin4Resilience