Almelo Pilot
Almelo as a 3DxVERSE Pilot City
Exploring Local Digital Twins for energy-aware and citizen-centric living environments
Almelo is one of the pilot locations participating in the 3DxVERSE project, a European initiative developing interoperable, trustworthy Local Digital Twins to support sustainable travel and living communities.
Within 3DxVERSE, Almelo represents a living community pilot, focusing on the built environment, neighbourhood-scale energy systems, and the interaction between digital technology and everyday urban life.
3DxVERSE is co-funded by the European Union under the Digital Europe Programme.
Why Almelo?
A Real-World Living Community Context
Almelo provides a representative urban living environment where sustainability challenges such as energy use, building performance, and community well-being are directly experienced by residents.
As a pilot city, Almelo contributes to exploring how Digital Twins can:
- Reflect real neighbourhoods and buildings
- Support energy-aware planning and decision-making
- Enable transparent and understandable digital representations of living environments
This makes Almelo a valuable testbed for human-scale Digital Twin applications, where citizens and communities are at the centre.
What Is Being Explored in the Almelo Pilot?
From Buildings to Neighbourhood Digital Twins
Within 3DxVERSE, the Almelo pilot supports exploration of Local Digital Twins for living communities, focusing on:
- Digital representations of buildings and neighbourhoods
- Integration of energy-related data at local scale
- Understanding interactions between buildings, infrastructure, and communities
- Supporting sustainability-oriented decisions in the built environment
Rather than delivering a single technical solution, the pilot helps shape how Local Digital Twins for living communities should be designed, governed, and reused.
A Citizen-Centric Perspective
Digital Twins That Serve People
A core principle of the Almelo pilot is human-centric design.
Within the broader 3DxVERSE framework, living community Digital Twins are explored as tools that:
- Make complex energy and environmental data more understandable
- Support informed participation by citizens and local stakeholders
- Increase transparency around sustainability-related decisions
- Respect privacy, security, and data governance requirements
This ensures that Digital Twins support better living environments, not just technical optimisation.
How Almelo Fits into 3DxVERSE
Part of a European Digital Twin Reference Framework
The Almelo pilot contributes to several core elements of the 3DxVERSE project, including:
- The Reference Architecture for interoperable Local Digital Twins
- The Digital Twin Interoperability Testbed
- Trust, security, and privacy frameworks aligned with European regulation
- Cross-domain integration between buildings, energy, and governance
By participating as a living community pilot, Almelo helps ensure that Digital Twin solutions developed within 3DxVERSE are relevant beyond mobility and transport, and applicable to everyday urban life.
Benefits for Cities and Communities
Why the Almelo Pilot Matters
Insights from the Almelo pilot contribute to understanding how Digital Twins can:
- Support sustainable neighbourhood development
- Improve transparency in energy and urban planning
- Enable evidence-based decision-making at local level
- Strengthen trust between public authorities and citizens
These learnings help shape scalable, reusable Digital Twin approaches for living communities across Europe.
What Comes Next
From Pilot Exploration to Reusable Approaches
The Almelo pilot feeds into ongoing work across 3DxVERSE, including:
- Use case development (WP6)
- Technical implementation and integration (WP7)
- Pilot activities and evaluation (WP8)
As the project progresses, experiences from Almelo will contribute to European reference approaches for Local Digital Twins in living communities.