vCity is a human-centric platform for urban digital twins, with the goal of improving life quality within the city by assisting urban planners make evidence-driven urban decisions. vCity's innovative approach combines 1) simulation by designing virtual replicas of the cities, 2) what-if scenario tools in urban planning and 3) getting the "pulse" of the city from digital platforms for citizen participation.
Innovation Summary
Innovation Overview
The vCity project is led by the Data Viz Group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and is aimed at developing a platform for digital urban twins while boosting the public-private ecosystem around this technology.
A digital urban twin is a virtual tool that, through layers of real city data and digital simulations, allows predicting and visualising the impact of public policies before they are implemented. This tool is aligned with the new trends of foresight and evidence-based policy design that are being adopted in Europe. It contributes to better planning decisions to address issues such as climate change, social inequalities, and sustainable development. At the same time, it is still an emerging technology and therefore an opportunity to lead the development of technology for public service.
The project is financed with NEXT GENERATION EU funds, from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (4.1M EUR approx) within the Spain Digital Agenda 2026, through the UNICO I+D CLOUD call of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation.
Through a strong investment in R&D and articulation with cities, vCity aims to achieve by mid-late 2025 a first version of an open-use urban digital twin platform. With cities as the main beneficiaries, it is expected that once vCity's objectives have been met, any city will be able to openly access the necessary tools to adapt the digital twin platform developed.
Currently, vCity (2023-2025) is in a requirements gathering phase in cities where use cases will be tested and co-developed together to demonstrate the platform. The link with BSC (Barcelona City Council - BSC framework agreement), its leadership in urban planning and its high level of digitalisation make Barcelona one of the cities chosen to test and co-create the vCity digital twin platform.
Innovation Description
What Makes Your Project Innovative?
- It aims to design and implement a digital twin for cities: a virtual replica of an urban environment
- Unlike other similar projects, vCity is a human-centred approach for the digitalisation of urban decision-making. The smartest city is not the one with the most number of sensors, but the one that makes better decisions. This is based on listening to people's needs. That's why vCity integrates feedback from Decidim, the digital platform for digital already used by more than 200 cities.
- Because vCity is focused on people's needs, the solution is committed to transparency in decision making, by open sourcing and auditing the processes involved.
What is the current status of your innovation?
vCity is finalising the requirements gathering process. Thanks to the collaboration with 3 pilot cities, (Barcelona, Viladecans (Spain), Kobe (Japan)), vCity and the city councils are co-creating together to urban planning solutions.
In parallel, the project is working on the design and implementation of the living lab focus on the efficient extension of cycle lane network infrastructure.
In addition, the project collaborates with the digital democracy platform Decicim. Through this initiative, vCity aims to provide digital urban solutions based on the needs and opinions of citizens.
Innovation Development
Collaborations & Partnerships
- Citizen participation, through Decidim, the digital platform for citizen participation.
- Government officials: Urban planners, policy departments from City Councils (Current stage: Barcelona, Viladecans, Kobe)
- Civil Society Organizations: DigitalFems
-More than 30+ institutions and companies are involved to foster the ecosystem of urban digital twins. See https://www.vcity.tech/about/#collaborators
Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
- Citizens: by providing feedback of their needs (urban decisions at neighbourhood-level), citizens will get better urban planning
- Government officials: City Councils' urban planners will get a platform to design, simulate an compare scenarios of urban interventions.
- Companies: Through subcontracting, companies are co-creating the digital twin platform for cities.
Innovation Reflections
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
The project has already developed two vCity studies:
- Are Barcelona climate shelters accessible to heat-vulnerable populations?
https://www.vcity.tech/studies/shelters
- Circular Barcelona: A New Urban Model
https://www.vcity.tech/studies/circular
Challenges and Failures
The challenges faced can be summarised in the following lessons learned:
- It is very important to have input from all the stakeholders involved.
- Every city has different needs and therefore solutions must be adapted accordingly.
Conditions for Success
- Urban Policy
- Leadership and guidance
- Infrastructure
- Scientific advice
Replication
The platform of digital twins is intended to be as open-source as possible, in a way to foster the adoption in any city.
The pilots are currently being replicated in 3 cities.
Lessons Learned
- From Eurocities Digital Forum 2024: Digitalisation must be people-centred
- Smart cities are not those that have sensors, but those that make smart decisions.
Anything Else?
vCity's Living Labs: https://www.vcity.tech/living-labs
Status:
- Implementation - making the innovation happen
Innovation provided by:
Date Published:
30 January 2025