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In November, we officially began work on another innovative project, DigiTwins4PEDs, which aims to bring optimization to urban energy transformation. The project, entitled Utilization of urban digital twins to co-create flexible positive energy systems for districts, brings together teams from different regions determined to accelerate change for sustainable energy. The consortium consists of ten partners from Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and Austria, including universities, research units, business partners and representatives of the cities that have been selected as test areas - Wroclaw, Vienna, Stuttgart and Rotterdam. The project will be implemented at the Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences for 2.5 years under the leadership of Dr Paweł Boguslawski, in close cooperation with Wroclaw business partner infoSolutions. The total budget of the project is over 1.5 million EUR, and the funding provided for UPWr is at the level of 224.000 EUR.

The DigiTwins4PEDs project is funded in Poland by the National Centre for Research and Development. It has been recommended for funding along with 47 other projects in the Driving Urban Transitions (DUT 2022) call. The funding is designed to support transnational innovative research projects addressing urban challenges to help cities transition to a more sustainable economy and functioning. The challenges are grouped into three themes: Positive Energy Districts (PED), the 15-Minute City (15mC) and Circular Urban Economies (CUE).

Project Goal: DigiTwins4PEDs was initiated in response to the growing challenges of the clean energy transition and the need to engage the public in the process. The goal is to create living labs for residents to co-create positive energy areas (PEDs) in their neighborhoods.

DigiTwins4PEDs in Brief:

The main concept of the DigiTwins4PEDs project is to use Urban Digital Twins as a digital representation of the real world, opening up a wide range of possibilities for modeling the energy aspects of cities. This innovative approach aims to create a platform for residents and stakeholders to exchange information, enabling them to visualize various PED scenarios before their actual implementation.

Our research will draw on the experience of previous initiatives carried out by consortium members, including IN-SOURCE and SUNEX, and will be based on the development of tools such as SimStadt and MAPED. This will allow the integration of socioeconomic and legal factors that characterize selected test areas, while modeling future energy demand.

The project is a step toward carbon-neutral cities and a sustainable energy future. Additionally, its goal is not only to develop the technology, but also to put it into practice using interactive tools and information-sharing platforms that will help prepare communities for PED implementation, encouraging the involvement of residents in the energy transition process.

Join us in our mission to create positive energy areas based on collaboration and community engagement! Interested parties are invited to contact us via email at pawel.boguslawski@upwr.edu.pl.