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.
Co-funded by the European Union
3DxVERSE is funded under the Digital Europe Programme — developing interoperable, trustworthy Digital Twins for sustainable travel and living communities.
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:
Real Neighbourhoods & Buildings
Reflecting real neighbourhoods and buildings in accurate, data-driven Digital Twin representations.
Energy-Aware Planning
Supporting energy-aware planning and decision-making at neighbourhood and city scale.
Transparent Digital Representations
Enabling transparent and understandable digital representations of living environments for citizens.
This makes Almelo a valuable testbed for human-scale Digital Twin applications, where citizens and communities are at the centre.
What Is Being Explored
From Buildings to Neighbourhood Digital Twins
Within 3DxVERSE, the Almelo pilot supports exploration of Local Digital Twins for living communities, focusing on:
Digital Representations
Digital representations of buildings and neighbourhoods within the Local Digital Twin environment.
Energy Data Integration
Integration of energy-related data at local scale to support smarter, greener urban planning.
Buildings, Infrastructure & Communities
Understanding interactions between buildings, infrastructure, and the communities that use them.
Sustainability-Oriented Decisions
Supporting sustainability-oriented decisions in the built environment through simulation and data.
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:
Reference Architecture
The Reference Architecture for interoperable Local Digital Twins across living communities.
Interoperability Testbed
The Digital Twin Interoperability Testbed for cross-domain and cross-system integration.
Trust & Security Frameworks
Trust, security, and privacy frameworks aligned with European regulation.
Cross-Domain Integration
Cross-domain integration between buildings, energy systems, 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
Driving greener, more liveable urban neighbourhoods through data-informed planning.
Improve transparency in energy and urban planning
Making energy and planning processes open and legible for citizens and decision-makers alike.
Enable evidence-based decision-making
Enabling evidence-based decision-making at local level through simulation and integrated data.
Strengthen trust between authorities and citizens
Building confidence and trust between public authorities and the communities they serve.
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
Defining and refining living community Digital Twin use cases within the 3DxVERSE framework.
Technical implementation and integration
Building and connecting the technical components of the neighbourhood Digital Twin environment.
Pilot activities and evaluation
Running real-world pilot activities and evaluating outcomes for scalability and replication.
As the project progresses, experiences from Almelo will contribute to European reference approaches for Local Digital Twins in living communities.