The Open Geospatial Consortium has released a new discussion paper on the topic of Urban Digital Twins.

Developed for city administration officials and professionals working within urban data contexts, the paper seeks to clarify the concept of Urban Digital Twins (UDT) and to position the concept in relation to Digital Twins in general, as well as with the emerging Metaverse.

According to the paper, the UDT concept is “an approach to understand characteristics and processes of the built environment at the scale of a city,” because between “climate change and various demographics, dynamic cities are facing challenges that are becoming more complex to solve”.

The paper presents three use cases — climate change adaptation, urban transformation and urban air mobility — and identifies the benefits to each of applying a UDT.

It also explains the role of geospatial information and how it can contribute to an UDT.