DigiTwins4PEDs

Numerous initiatives are advancing clean energy and urban sustainability in city districts, such as the EU SET-Plan Action 3.2 targeting 100 European Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) by 2025. Research highlights the essential role of stakeholder engagement, particularly citizens, and technology integration in this transition. While technological innovation is crucial for PEDs, societal transformation, driven by active citizen participation, is equally important. DigiTwins4PEDs works with local communities, residents, and stakeholders in cities like Stuttgart, Vienna, Rotterdam, and Wroclaw. Utilising Urban Digital Twins (UDTs), the project develops tools to expedite PED implementation. The UDT platform will serves as a co-creation hub in living labs across case study regions, promoting a citizen-led shift toward PEDs in densely populated urban areas.

• How can the establishment of living labs and the development of UDT based tools effectively foster information exchange and facilitate co-creation for community-based energy solutions in support of civil society-led sustainable urban transformation?
• How can a data-driven methodology be developed to identify urban typologies within existing urban districts that exhibit a high potential for transitioning into Positive Energy Districts (PEDs)?
• How can urban challenges in different case studies result in capacity building, knowledge transfer, and the identification of best practices to enhance the transferability of project results to other EU and global urban areas?

DigiTwins4PEDs takes a bottom-up approach, involving local communities in driving the transition to Positive Energy Districts (PEDs). The project, in collaboration with residents and stakeholders, identifies barriers to PED progress and energy flexibility at the neighborhood level. It uses Urban Digital Twins (UDTs) to develop tools and methods to accelerate the shift to PEDs in urban areas, studying their impact on local and regional scales. The UDT platform of DigiTwins4PEDs will serve as a co-creation platform in a living lab format for simulating energy transition scenarios, aiding in performance monitoring, sustainability assessment, and carbon reduction in case study areas.

DigiTwins4PEDs is expected to contribute in advancing knowledge, best practices and experience related to planning and realisation of PEDs to manage the challenge of energy flexibility. The applied modelling tools within DigiTwins4PEDs will analyse these flexibility-related elements in co-design and co-creation with the stakeholders to a citizen-led shift toward PEDs. DigiTwins4PEDs will further assist in broadening the universal knowledge about Cities for future research.

This project has been funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action under the Driving Urban Transitions Partnership, which has been co-funded by the European Commission.