3D Dublin: Local Digital Twins for Better Decisions

Dublin is building a citywide ecosystem of Local Digital Twins (LDTs) to support evidence-based planning, climate action and public engagement. What began with a high-resolution 3D model of the Docklands Districit has grown into air-quality mapping, active travel impact assessment, emergency-response and management, smart-campus operations, tourism applications and inclusive digital-governance pilots. These twins integrate reality capture, open data, IoT feeds, simulations and citizen feedback into a shared decision-support virtual environment. Through the Twin4Resilience (T4R), INTERREG North West Europe co-funded project and other initiatives, Dublin is codifying standards for ethics, inclusion, interoperability and organisational capacity, transforming digital twins from “pretty models” into socio-technical tools that create public value, strengthen engagement and enhance urban resilience.

Developing through targeted pilots, the initiative avoids a “big bang” approach to build a scalable, cross-sector ecosystem.

From 3D Docklands model to digital twin ecosystem

• Procurement of a high-resolution 5 km² 3D Docklands model (150 mm accuracy) covering existing and planned buildings.
• Open release via Smart Dublin’s data portal and a 2019 3D Hackathon testing planning, mobility and climate applications.
• Integration with Bentley OpenCities Planner for cloud-based navigation, shading, massing and scenario analysis.
• VR and browser upgrades to support wider departmental and partner use.

Building a socio-technical foundation

• Co-design of technical, governance, ethics, inclusion and training frameworks with 7 authorities and 6 innovation partners.
• Contributions to ISO/IEC and NSAI standards on smart cities and digital twins.
• Development of a staff training programme through the EU Twin4Resilience project.
• Expertise from ADAPT’s Transparent Digital Governance research informing public engagement on AI and data.
• Creation of a Digital Twin Stakeholder Network of 200+ actors across planning, climate, emergency services, tourism, ICT, academia and industry.
• Focus on “data insights, not datasets,” ensuring each twin responds to specific policy needs.

Local pilots across policy domains

• Docklands Engagement Twin: Web-GIS and 3D tools for participatory planning.
• Project Air View: 16-month mobile campaign collecting 50+ million air-quality measurements.
• Docklands Planning Twin: Detailed 3D base integrating planning and infrastructure data.
• Active Travel Insights: Real-time cycling and walking data from multimodal sources.
• Living Cities Twin: High-detail 3D models of two city-centre streets linked to energy and vacancy data.
• Emergency Response Twin: Reality-mesh models for Dublin Fire Brigade.
• Smart DCU Campus: Drone/LiDAR models linked to IoT data for operations and accessibility.
• Smart Tourism AR/VR: “Doors into the Docklands” and “DiscovAR.”

European Scaling through Twin4Resilience (T4R) 

• Participation in a 6-country, 14-partner Interreg NWE project developing shared LDT frameworks.
• Co-lead of the Ethics, Inclusion and Democratisation workstream contributing to pilots and 300+ officials training.
• Establishment of a Local Stakeholder Group and Transnational Community of Practice to mainstream LDTs by 2027.

The programme is deliberately built on a “quadruple helix” of public sector, academia, private sector and civil society. 

• Public Bodies: The four Dublin local authorities under the Smart Dublin umbrella – Fingal County Council, South Dublin County Council, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council and Dublin City Council along with national bodies like  Tailte Éireann (national mapping agency).
• City departments: Climate Action Unit, Planning & Development, Smart Tourism, Dublin Fire Brigade, IT, active travel programme office and data teams.
• Research partners: ADAPT Centre (University College Dublin), INSIGHT Centre at Dublin City University, Connect centre at Trinity College Dublin, Technology University Dublin, Irish Centre for High End Computing, and other European universities involved in T4R.
• Private sector: Enterprises such as Bentley Systems, ESRI, Google, Cesium and SMEs  working on AR/VR, data analytics and engagement platforms such as Data&Desig, RealSim Limited, UTS technologies etc . 
• Civic and community actors: Local councillors, community organisations, tourism partners and residents engaged through surveys, workshops and online platforms. Professional networks like Urban Land Institute. Irish Organization for Geographic Information and International Society of City and Regional Planners.

Communication focuses on making complex data tangible and inviting dialogue rather than one-way “visualisation.”

• Immersive storytelling: AR/VR apps and 3D tours help residents and visitors explore Docklands and other areas, linking place-based narratives to data and planning proposals.
• Online engagement platforms: Web-based tools as proof of concepts (maps, comment layers, surveys) allow residents to annotate the digital twin with local knowledge and preferences.
• Citizens’ Think-ins and AI debates: Deliberative formats on AI and digital governance via ADAPT centre build understanding of risks and benefits, feeding into ethical guidelines. 
• Transparency and open data: Project Air View datasets, Docklands 3D data, Active Travel and other layers are shared via open data portals like Dublinked, demonstrating the rationale behind decisions. 

The digital twin ecosystem combines EU, national research and municipal resources, with targeted private contributions.

• EU funding: Interreg NWE Twin4Resilience (T4R) with total budget €8.38m (EU contribution €5.03m) across six countries, supporting Dublin’s pilot actions, training and LDT frameworks. 
• National research funding: Science Foundation Ireland (now called Research Ireland) financing through ADAPT Centre grants [13/RC/2106_P2] and [20/SP/8955] backs research on ethical AI, digital content technology and engaged methodologies for local digital twins. 
• Municipal investment: Dublin City Council co-funds digital twin project with ADAPT centre and dedicates staff time, data infrastructure, drone surveys, engagement budgets and climate action resources to digital twin pilots (Docklands, emergency response, climate dashboard).
• Private and in-kind contributions: Technology partners (e.g. Bentley, Google, ESRI, Aclima) provide platforms, technical support and co-development efforts in specific pilots such as Smart DCU and Project Air View. 

While still evolving, Dublin’s digital twin work is already changing how the city designs, debates and delivers interventions.

• Better evidence for climate and health policy: Hyperlocal air-quality maps highlight hotspots near busy roads and sensitive uses, informing discussions on low-emission zones, street design and active travel. 
• Stronger emergency preparedness: DFB’s digital twin enables pre-planning for complex incidents at heritage and industrial sites, improving situational awareness, training and response coordination.
• Richer citizen engagement: Interactive 3D and VR tools make development proposals more legible to non-experts, while surveys and online maps collect grounded feedback that planners can act on.
• Capacity and culture change inside the city: Cross-departmental working groups and T4R training are seeding a new cohort of officials comfortable working with 3D models, sensors, ethics frameworks and public engagement together.
• International positioning: Dublin is now recognised as a frontrunner in urban digital twins, sharing lessons with other cities via EU projects, webinars and global fora.

Dublin’s experience shows that the hardest problems are not purely technical, but organisational, social and ethical.

• Clarifying purpose and value: Early work highlighted the risk of digital twins being seen as “visual gimmicks.” The city had to continually ask: What problem are we solving? Where is the value, visual communication, analytics, or both?
• Data integration and interoperability: Combining reality capture, BIM, sensor feeds and administrative data into usable, maintained twins required new workflows, standards and agreements with partners.
• Skills and capacity gaps: Not all departments were ready to work with 3D/real-time data; Twin4Resilience explicitly prioritises skilling and organisational change as core goals, not side issues.
• Trust, ethics and inclusion: Questions about surveillance, bias, ownership and “who benefits” demanded explicit ethical frameworks and citizen dialogue, not just privacy notices.
• Scaling beyond pilots: Moving from innovative experiments (e.g. one district, one campus) to routine mainstream tools for budgeting, climate planning or development control remains a work in progress.

Dublin’s approach is highly replicable because it prioritises process, governance and public value, not just software. These are its core design principles:

• Start with a clear place and question—such as a regeneration district, campus or corridor—and build a high-quality 3D base model anchored in real policy needs (planning, air quality, emergency response).
• Treat the digital twin as a socio-technical system, combining data and tools with engagement methods, ethical guidelines and transparency measures.
• Adopt open data and open APIs so innovators, researchers and SMEs can extend the twin’s uses beyond what the city can deliver alone.
• Embed digital-twin work in climate and development plans (e.g., Climate Neutral strategies, Covenant of Mayors commitments) so insights influence real investments and decision cycles.
• Join transnational programmes like Twin4Resilience to access shared frameworks, training and governance models, especially for ethics, capacity-building and organisational change.

In essence, Dublin demonstrates how digital twins can move from experimental visualisations to a practical backbone for participatory, climate-aligned and data-driven urban governance, when cities invest equally in people, ethics and collaboration as in technology.

• Smart Dublin – overview of Dublin’s smart city and digital twin initiatives 
• Dublin City Council – Climate Neutral Dublin 2030 / Climate Action Plan 2024–2029 
• Interreg NWE – Twin4Resilience (T4R) project page 
• “Digital Twins Implementation in the City of Dublin, Ireland” – external case study on Dublin’s digital twin ecosystem 
• Digital Twins Implementation in the City of Dublin, Ireland: AECbytes Feature
• Webinar smart city Dublin - Slides.pdf
• 3D Modelling and Future of Planning - smartdocklands
• Dublin Active Travel Dashboard
• DCU Campus Explorer & Campus Ambassador
• Dublin Fire Brigade Blazes a Trail for Digital Twins in Emergency Response | Bentley Blog | Infrastructure Engineering Software & Solutions
• Open Data, Open Minds: Dublin’s Urban Tech Challenge Draws a Blueprint For a Smarter City | Bentley Blog | Infrastructure Engineering Software & Solutions

Dr. Mani Dhingra
Smart City Digital Twin Programme Lead, Dublin City Council
ADAPT Digital Twin Research Lead, University College Dublin
mani.dhingra@dublincity.ie
mani.dhingra@adaptcentre.ie