LINK Urban Digital Twinning (LINKUDT): Advancing Climate Adaptation and Planning Acceleration through Interoperable Digital Twin Ecosystems

The accelerating impacts of climate change and subsequent impact on urban environments such as flooding risks, extreme heat and heavy rain, necessitate rapid and integrated planning strategies. Urban Digital Twins (UDT) have emerged as valuable tools, offering the ability to dynamically model, simulate, and visualize complex processes to support data-driven decision-making. However, a comprehensive strategy that supports the integration of the multitude of UDTs that is being developed specifically into climate adaptation measures, while ensuring interoperability, digital sovereignty and stakeholder participation, is still lacking.

This contribution introduces the collaborative project LINKUDT (“Coordination and Collaboration Platforms for the Synergetic Conception, Development, Interoperability, and Digital Sovereignty of Urban Digital Twins”). Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space for a duration of 48 months, LINKUDT serves as the overarching companion research project for six regional real-world laboratories across Germany. The primary objective of the project is to establish UDTs as central instruments for speeding up urban planning processes to improve climate adaptation and sustainable urban development by identifying synergies and supporting interoperability.

A core challenge addressed by LINKUDT is the creation of interoperable and sustainable data infrastructures. Following the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), the project aims at advancing standards that allow for the efficient integration of heterogeneous data sources, such as sensor networks and environmental models. To prevent vendor lock-in and ensure long-term data portability, LINKUDT emphasizes digital sovereignty through the use and further development of open-source software modules and standards (e.g., OGC API Processes, SensorThings API, CityGML).

Further key outcomes of LINKUDT include training modules for stakeholders /e.g. public administration, developers), and policy recommendations for the nationwide application of digital twin technologies.

By linking the National Research Data Infrastructure for Earth System Sciences (NFDI4Earth) with administrative data infrastructures (GDI-DE), LINKUDT creates a scalable model for evidence-based urban governance. 

With our contribution we aim to reach out to further digital twin initiatives related to climate change to initiate further exchange on interoperability, digital sovereignty and emerging technologies.