In an era where cities take on an increasing role in tackling climate change, the need for tools that support more integrated, informed, and impact-oriented urban governance has become an imperative. In this context, Urban Digital Twins have been emerging as one of the most promising instruments to accelerate climate action and urban decarbonization. At Porto Business School (PBS), this understanding underpins our engagement in CITY4CLIMATE, a project focused on developing and implementing Urban Digital Twins as data-driven tools to support climate governance and decision-making in European cities.
What are Urban Digital Twins and why do they matter for climate action?
Picture a city where digital technologies and urban planning work side by side to create a more efficient, sustainable, and people-centered environment. This is the essence of a smart city. At the core of this vision lie Urban Digital Twins, which are virtual representations of cities that enable urban planners and policymakers to explore, analyse, and optimize different dimensions to urban life.
Digital Twins are therefore a digital model of a physical system that brings together real-time data, analytical tools, and simulation capabilities, allowing for continuous monitoring and insight into how the system behaves and evolves. When applied to cities, digital twins reflect the complexity of urban environments by modelling elements such as buildings, mobility networks, energy systems, emissions, and land use, as well as the interactions between them.
By integrating data from multiple sources, Urban Digital Twins allow cities to test urban strategies and public policies in a virtual setting before implementing them in the real world. They also serve as a shared platform that connects public authorities, technical teams, and other stakeholders, fostering collaboration and supporting more informed and effective urban data-driven decision-making.
The role of Digital Twins in Climate Governance and Decarbonization
As climate change accelerates the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, cities face growing pressure to strengthen resilience while simultaneously reducing their environmental impact. Urban areas, responsible for a substantial share of global greenhouse gas emissions, are at the forefront of this challenge. In response, cities are increasingly turning to Urban Digital Twins as strategic tools to support more informed, coordinated and effective climate governance.
Urban Digital Twins combine large volumes of urban data with advanced analytics, simulation capabilities, and AI to replicate the behaviour of physical assets and urban systems in a virtual environment. This enables cities to anticipate risks, explore alternative policy scenarios, and assess the impact of climate actions before their real-world implementation.
From a decarbonization perspective, Digital Twins provide a robust foundation for data-driven decision-making across multiple sectors. They are commonly used to support a wide range of climate governance and decarbonization functions, including:
- Climate risk and resilience planning, such as flood modelling, heatwave impact assessment, and sea level rise scenarios
- Green and nature-based infrastructure design, helping mitigate urban heat island effects and improve environmental quality
- Energy system optimization, including energy grid planning, renewable energy integration, and demand forecasting
- Building performance and retrofitting strategies, supporting whole-life carbon reduction and net-zero pathways
- Emergency management and response, enabling real-time monitoring and coordinated interventions during extreme events
- Environmental monitoring, including air quality, drought detection, and groundwater level analysis.
By transforming complex urban systems into actionable insights, Urban Digital Twins help cities move beyond fragmented interventions towards coherent, adaptive, and evidence-based strategies. They empower decision-makers to prioritize interventions, optimize resource use, and monitor progress in real time. Ultimately, Digital Twins are not just technological innovations, they are enables of resilient, low-carbon, and future-ready cities, bridging the gap between climate ambition and effective governance.
CITY4CLIMATE: Urban Digital Twins for Climate Actions
Cities are responsible for over 70% of global CO2 emissions and are amongst the most vulnerable to climate change. CITY4CLIMATE was thus developed under the DigitalTwins4SmartTerritories (DS4ST) programme in order to close this gap, while harnessing Urban Digital Twins to help accelerate Portuguese cities transition towards climate neutrality. By creating 3D virtual models that integrate live data, predictive analytics, and scenario modelling, these virtual city replicas support the simulation, monitoring and forecasting of the impacts of public policies and climate action in order to make faster, data-driven decisions.
The initiative is aligned with Portugal´s National Strategy for Smart Territories and with the Climate City Contracts of Portuguese cities participating in the EU Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030. Focusing on the cities of Porto, Lisbon and Guimarães, CITY4CLIMATE supports climate governance and urban decarbonization while also strengthening capacities in the collaborating cities of Aveiro, Oeiras, and Vila Nova de Famalicão.
“Urban Digital Twins are emerging as critical infrastructures for the future of urban governance, enabling cities to anticipate scenarios, test policies, and make evidence-based decisions. In Porto, we see these instruments as pillars of our strategy for digital sovereignty and leadership in climate action, positioning the city at the forefront of urban innovation in Europe. The collaboration between Porto Digital, Porto Business School, and the other ecosystem partners demonstrates that it is through strategic alliances that real capacity for territorial transformation is built.” Ana Carneiro – Porto Digital
CITY4CLIMATE has three main objectives:
- Implement a Digital Twin architecture with real-time data, forecasts, and scenario simulations in Lisbon, Porto and Guimarães.
- Enable replication and capacity building so that other cities can adopt climate digital governance models
- Develop a scalable and interoperable framework aligned with European standards, integrating data, indicators, and governance processes
The project is supported by a multidisciplinary consortium that includes Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Associação Porto Digital, Agência de Energia do Porto, PBS, CCG/ZGDV, TekPrivacy, DevScope, Lisboa E-Nova, Universidade de Aveiro and Ubiwhere, and benefits from the institutional collaboration of the Municipalities of Porto, Lisbon, Guimarães, Oeiras and Vila Nova de Famalicão.
Within the Consortium, PBS contributes with a focus on results exploitation, impact assessment, and long-term sustainability, through the development of business and commercialization models, impact assessment studies on adoption and replication potential, and analyses of the economic, institutional and organizational viability of the solutions beyond the project’s lifetime.
