Smart Cities and Digital Twins in Lower Austria

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel digital twin-based model for smart cities in Lower Austria, integrating complexity theory and social science to address societal challenges and guide sustainable urban development.

Contribution

It develops a comprehensive smart city model using digital twins and a transdisciplinary process, with a focus on applicability to diverse regional and rural contexts.

Findings

A digital twin-based smart city model is developed and validated.

Guidelines and policy recommendations for sustainable smart city development are provided.

A roadmap for adapting smart city frameworks to various regional contexts is created.

Abstract

Smart city solutions require innovative governance approaches together with the smart use of technology, such as digital twins, by city managers and policymakers to manage the big societal challenges. The project Smart Cities aNd Digital Twins in Lower Austria (SCiNDTiLA) extends the state of the art of research in several contributing disciplines and uses the foundations of complexity theory and computational social science methods to develop a digital-twin-based smart city model. The project will also apply a novel transdisciplinary process to conceptualise sustainable smart cities and validate the smart city generic model. The outcomes will be translated into a roadmap highlighting methodologies, guidelines and policy recommendations for tackling societal challenges in smart cities with a focus on rescaling the entire framework to be transferred to regions, smaller towns and non-urban environments, such as rural areas and smart villages, in ways that fit the respective local governance, ethical and operational capacity context.