Future blog | What will the future of Helsinki’s digital twins be like?

In this blog post, Technical Specialist Juho-Pekka Virtanen from Forum Virium Helsinki’s data team muses on the advantages and challenges related to the development of the city’s digital twin and the future of digital twins.

From computer games to a city simulation

I am a member of one of the first generations to be raised by game worlds, whose home computers were yet to be connected to the internet but still opened a door to new worlds. When it came to early computer games, various simulators were among my personal favourites. In addition to planes and cars, they also simulated cities and ant colonies alike. 

Broadly speaking, digital twins have to do with almost the same thing: digital equivalents are used in an effort to understand the behaviour and current state of complex entities in the physical world. Of course, the difference is that computer games involve play-like activities in a virtual sandbox without fear of real-life consequences.

The digital twin of Helsinki as a city planning aid

In the case of Helsinki, the development of digital twins began in practice decades ago, through the development of geospatial datasets and 3D city models. The purpose of three-dimensional city models is to bring different aspects of the urban environment together. Digital twins supplement city models with more frequently updated data sources, interaction tools and various impact assessment mechanisms. Whereas a city model is a dataset, a digital twin is a whole formed by datasets and tools.

Image: A city model forms the basis for the city’s digital twin. City information model of Helsinki 2024, City of Helsinki, city survey. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

We have approached the development of cities’ digital twins from several different angles in different projects at Forum Virium Helsinki. Our perspective is most often the development of digital twins and their application to a certain problem. For example, in the Regions4Climate project, we are developing a tool that combines different climate risks threatening the city and socio-economic materials for the use of experts and everyone interested in the subject. Our goal is to identify areas the residents of which are in a particularly vulnerable position as the climate changes. Conversely, the GreenInCities project involves us looking into using digital twins
to support green environment planning, increasing biodiversity and resident participation.

In order for the digital twins of cities to yield tools to be utilised extensively to resolve various contemporary challenges of the city, they need to be supplemented with plenty of new data sources. In my view, these include combining various socio-economic variables in particular with data describing the built environment, whereby socio-economic phenomena can also be brought into analyses. This ‘social dimension’ is a significant and contemporary development trend for the digital twins of cities.

In my opinion, an equally significant future application area is the green dimension sites of cities, i.e. their vegetation and nature. Trees, parks and forests living in rhythm with the seasons can be monitored with charting methods updated more frequently than conventional aerial photography, such as satellite imaging, like in our SPACE4Cities project.

Image: Töölönlahti Park lives in rhythm with the seasons – both visually in images and in the vegetation index produced based on satellite imaging. Copernicus Sentinel material from 2024 processed in the Sentinel Hub service. Public area register data by Helsinki Urban Environment Division / Built Assets Management, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

Digital twins contribute to a more equal city

My vision for the future is that all the changes and operations in the city could first be planned in a digital environment, assessing their impacts comprehensively from different perspectives – before implementation. This way, we would also be able to compare different alternatives better and more transparently. By combining figures, qualitative data and geospatial data, we will be able to understand aspects such as the impacts of construction projects on the urban environment, nature and people more comprehensively. The objective is that city could eventually be simulated like in games, in real time and diversely, but by utilising actual data with research-based methods.

“Softer” data sources, such as results from the charting of natural environments and data regarding resident participation, need to be equally represented in the same tools as aspects such as financial figures, so that decisions will not be made solely based on money. With regard to Helsinki residents and businesses operating in the city, our objective is to open a window to the future, i.e. to make it possible for people to see the city of the future and talk about it in the present. 

The development of data sources requires persistence and cooperation. Occasionally, the development of digital twins leads to the construction of a basis for data collection and usage. For example, here at Forum Virium we have collaborated with the City to implement Helsinki’s first centralised traffic counting data collection and distribution system. By bringing all traffic counting data in a standardised format into the same system, we are also creating conditions for bringing in data about transport more easily than before to serve as a data source for various systems – or the city’s digital twins, for example.

Pilots and iterative development are often needed as well. With regard to the green environment, our projects have involved piloting modelling of the tree stock and combining it with the City’s other datasets in various ways, first by Forum Virium alone and later in cooperation with the Urban Environment Division. This subject has gradually matured enough to enter the City’s internal development work.

Image from the Regions4Climate project: By combining built and natural environment sites, we are able to better understand aspects such as the significance of the tree stock in terms of cooling the city. The image shows land cover data from the Helsinki region. The data is maintained by Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority HSY, with HSY and the municipalities of the area being the original authors. The data on buildings in Helsinki is maintained by the City of Helsinki Urban Environment Division / City Survey Services. Both datasets licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

The development of digital twins requires cooperation

The development of cities’ digital twins requires bringing a wide variety of expertise and knowledge together. This cannot be done as an internal operation of the city organisation alone – help is needed from research institutions and the business sector alike. From a technical perspective, this means that digital twins are thought of as modular systems in which various datasets are brought together via open interfaces. This way, individual datasets or tools can be provided by the best operators in their respective fields.

Consequently, cities’ digital twins become network-like entities formed by tools and datasets produced by an ecosystem of operators. 

Above all, the development of city planning tools calls for a comprehensive understanding of the problems faced by the city, the organisation and the roles of operators. For example, in order to work as a useful tool, a digital twin focusing on the city’s heat island phenomenon requires a comprehensive understanding of the roles and duties of the city’s different experts. Without this understanding, even good tools are quick to end up being shelved, never producing the desired impacts.

From technical hype to genuine use cases

Over the three years that I have been in the service of Forum Virium, cities’ digital twins have matured in many ways, both as a concept and as an activity. We have moved from technical hype and standalone pilots towards genuine use cases and implementations integrated into cities’ information technology infrastructure. At the same time, digital twins have become a topic that touches more and more experts both at the city and in the business sector. 

Next-generation digital twins will be clearly more networked than current ones, available for viewing via several different user interfaces and enriched with more diverse simulation functions. At the same time, we need to solve a large number of technical problems related to new interfaces and aspects such as integrating AI-based components. It is my belief that technical development around this subject will pick up steam at a fast pace.