Local Digital Twins for Smart and Sustainable Communities
LDT4SSC aims to build a Europe-wide federation of interconnected Local Digital Twins (LDTs), enabling seamless data exchange, AI-driven services and scalable solutions for challenges such as climate change, resource management and energy efficiency. Leveraging EU initiatives like the LDT Toolbox, DS4SSCC and CitiVerse, the project will fund city-led pilots, promote interoperability and foster a stakeholder community to drive sustainable, ethical and open innovation across smart communities.
Many European cities and communities are developing Local Digital Twins and urban data platforms at different speeds, leading to fragmented systems, limited interoperability and missed opportunities for collaboration and community development. This initiative aims to overcome these gaps by creating a federated, AI-enhanced LDT ecosystem that connects infrastructures, scales services and enables all communities, regardless of digital maturity, to access advanced, sustainable and citizen-centric solutions.
Objective
LDT4SSC aims to create a robust, interconnected ecosystem of Local Digital Twins (LDTs) that scales across sectors, regions and borders, driving the adoption of LDT services and the development of advanced AI-driven services. By leveraging prior achievements like the EU LDT Toolbox and the European data space for smart communities (DS4SSCC-DEP), and integrating with ongoing efforts such as CitiVerse and the LDT CitiVERSE EDIC, the project will create tangible resources to enable European communities to address shared challenges using LDT technology, e.g., climate change, air quality, waste or water management or energy efficiency.
A key goal is to connect (existing) LDTs into a European “federation” through a common interoperability blueprint, consolidating work from DSSC, DS4SSCC, GAIA-X and SIMPL. This blueprint will facilitate seamless data exchange and integration, enabling communities to share resources, optimise decision-making and create scalable, open-source solutions. By launching a community of stakeholders, the project will engage representatives from government, industry, academia and civil society to inform activities and ensure outputs meet diverse needs.
The project will facilitate and fund the practical implementation of these solutions through 15-20 pilots of multi-stakeholder consortia working on use cases addressing critical domains (e.g.: resource management). These pilots will also seed a marketplace of AI-driven services tailored to community challenges. By enabling the replication and scalability of services across regions, the project will stimulate a dynamic LDT market, fostering collaboration and aligning with the EU’s Digital Decade policies. Through these activities, the project seeks to establish a unified digital landscape in Europe, supporting ethical AI, open standards and fair competition, while promoting sustainable, scalable solutions for smart communities.
Duration and partners
Duration: June 2025 – December 2028 (43 months)
Partners:
- Open & Agile Smart Cities & Communities (BE)
- Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LU)
- FIWARE Foundation EV (DE)
- KEREVAL (FR)
- Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) (EE)
- European Network of Living Labs IVZW (BE)
- Centre d’études et d’expertise sur les risques, l’environnement, la mobilité et l’aménagement (CEREMA) (FR)
- Technopolis Consulting Group Belgium (BE)
- Libelium Lab SL (ES)
- University of Ghent (BE)
Funding
Funding source: Digital Europe Programme, European Commission
Budget: Total budget is 19 999 633,72 EUR (budget for the FinEst Centre is 199 983 EUR).
Sustainability and Responsibility
The project advances the EU Green Deal’s vision of climate neutrality by deploying Local Digital Twins to optimise city operations, strengthen sustainability, and enable evidence-based decision-making in key areas such as energy efficiency, urban planning and environmental monitoring. By aligning with other EU initiatives, facilitating the sharing of LDT services with digitally less advanced communities and ultimately federating these systems, the initiative empowers cities and communities to progress in their digital transformation while leveraging technology to promote environmental sustainability. In doing so, it also prioritises citizen well-being, delivering more impactful, cost-efficient solutions that foster healthier, more sustainable living environments.
The Role of the FinEst Centre for Smart Cities
FinEst Centre for Smart Cities is responsible for elaborating the strategy for sustainability of the ecosystem and its resources. It steers the effort to provide strategic advice for the LDT stakeholders focusing on value creation and business rationales, taking into account also the unique value propositions for engaging other actors across the smart cities domain to join the LTD initiatives. Further, the Centre supports the definition of conditions for open calls, iteration of the interoperability blueprint and more.
