Open & Agile Smart Cities is one of the 20 partners to launch the Urban Development Initiative (UDI). The Initiative kicks off with the Digital City Programme this February in collaboration with partners from business, government and research.
The programme focuses on digital solutions for integrated and sustainable urban planning through digital twinning and virtual reality. In a digital twin, the physical city will be reconstructed digitally (Read more about Digital Twins here). Digital Twins make it possible to design and test city operations virtually before changing the real city environment. This type of policy-supporting instrument helps to make complex urban issues more comprehensible.
Digital twins are suitable instruments for co-creation and decision-making in the collaboration within government institutions and in the coordination with its partners, but it also contributes to improving citizen engagement.
Davor Meersman, CEO of Open & Agile Smart Cities, said:
We are excited to take part in this important initiative. Local and regional initiatives like this create a positive impact for cities around the world by taking an approach of co-creation, sharing knowledge and applying interoperability mechanisms from the very start. The Urban Development Initiative helps stakeholders decide where to innovate, and where to replicate. This increases impact, curbs cost, and helps boost the local innovation ecosystem.”
Together with the partners and other interested stakeholders, the programme will be further elaborated in the coming six months. In summer 2021, the Digital City Programme will go into implementation mode.
About the Urban Development Initiative
The cooperation in the Urban Development Initiative (UDI), initiated by the Dutch municipalities of Eindhoven and Helmond, Brainport Development and the TU/e together with the German Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, has the ambition to offer integrated and innovative answers to complex urban issues in the region. This contributes to the improvement of the quality of life, work and accommodation now and in the future. By collaborating on a number of themes with a large number of other parties from the business community and the (semi-) public sector, ecosystems with great innovative power are created. In this way, innovative solutions in the region can be developed faster and more efficiently, and then scaled up.