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HKU develops toolkit for European project T4R

HKU lecturers and researchers Willem-Jan Renger and Evert Hoogendoorn are working on a toolkit for Local Digital Twins in the European project Twin4Resilience: interactive 3D models that can visualize all available data about a city in mutual consistency. With the toolkit, a variety of parties can learn to work with these models. The two are starting with pilot cities Utrecht and Amsterdam. The intention is that other cities will find it easier to join later thanks in part to the toolkit.
HKU develops toolkit for European project T4R

The idea behind the Local Digital Twins (LDTs) - the interactive 3D models of cities - is to visualize big data in mutual coherence. More and more data is being collected on all kinds of processes taking place in cities. Think of traffic flow, waste streams, or data on environmental temperature and air quality. This is data of great value for the design and management of a city.

Simulations

Amsterdam and Utrecht have already made a start: on 3d.amsterdam.nl and 3d.utrecht.nl - soon to be combined in netherlands3D.eu - platforms are growing where you can walk through the city like in a game. Not only with an image of the buildings and streets as in Google Maps, but with the addition of all other desired information. You can easily access that information by activating different layers. Through simulations in this digital world, the impact of interventions and works can be understood in advance before they are carried out in the real world. For example, what happens if you plant or remove trees in certain areas, what do new buildings do to the environment, what is still possible in terms of urban densification, and what does that look like? The idea is that spatial development issues are easier to solve with this. That policy makers and the public can better understand what urban space can look like in the context of major social challenges, such as climate, energy, housing and green space in the city.

'This project is about so much more than the technology'

Now that the LDT technology is in place, the question arises of how to implement it. What should be visible to whom in the digital twins, and how do you ensure that it becomes workable for diverse parties? In the European Twin4Resilience (T4R) project, six European countries are looking for answers to these questions. HKU is part of this collaboration, which is led by the City of Utrecht. It examines how to introduce LDTs to municipalities, businesses and citizens, as well as how to properly implement and integrate them into democratic decision-making processes. The partners involved are addressing numerous questions surrounding the collection, linking and disclosure of data in LDTs.

Four frameworks

This track is divided into four so-called frameworks: technical design, governance, ethics and training and knowledge sharing. The latter, officially the “train-the-trainer framework,” is the project part that HKU is taking care of. HKU lecturers Willem-Jan Renger and Evert Hoogendoorn, both teachers, designers and researchers, are working closely with another partner of the project in this, the German K8, Institut Für Strategische Aesthitik. They are working on a toolkit that will allow everything developed within the other frameworks to be transferred and applied. Renger: 'We want to give the different parties that are going to work with a digital twin the tools to start setting up and using the platform properly together.'

Ethics and governance

'This project is about so much more than the technology,' he continues. 'We want to prevent LDTs from being introduced as a traditional technology push. The material we develop should help ask the right questions and make the right choices as early as the startup phase. In doing so, ethics and governance should not lag behind. We don't want big brother cities nor Oppenheimer scenarios.'

Lab, Studio, Arena, Agora

In designing their method, they will use, among other things, a component of the Systemic Design Toolkit by Kristel van Ael and Peter Jones. It divides the development of new systems into four phases: technical development in the Lab, design and prototyping in the Studio, participation and testing by those directly involved in the Arena, and finally involving all interested parties in the Agora.

Intermediary layer

The pilot cities of Amsterdam and Utrecht are looking at how to create tools for each of these phases to shape conversations between techies, designers, civil servants, businesses and citizens. Renger: 'We want to build an intermediary layer through which parties in the four frameworks can relate to each other, asking each other legitimized critical questions.'

Ludo-didactic toolkit

Needless to say, it will not be a classic training with a syllabus in a classroom. Renger and Hoogendoorn are working on a toolkit based on ludodidactics, their own method for developing teaching based on game principles. Renger puts on the table a set of cards he previously made for the European project CYANOTYPES. Each card represents a different role. By giving everyone at the table a card and always passing it around after an agreed time, an issue is tackled from different perspectives and the division of roles becomes clear. Such a toolkit is now also being developed for T4R to learn how to discuss the interpretation and deployment of an LDT with multiple stakeholders.

Accelerating entry

By doing this in the pilot projects as an exercise, an implementation process is being designed that other cities can benefit from. Renger: 'If Zwolle also wants a digital twin in the near future, the material we are developing should help them structure the process and make the right considerations at the very beginning. What do they do and what don't they do, do they start in the Lab phase or in the Arena? With the toolkits that we are developing in the pilots as we go along, we are working towards a system where cities will soon be able to get in quicker.'

Contact - Willem-Jan Renger: willem-jan.renger@hku.nl