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Future Insight

A dynamic Digital Twin for urban water management

Updated: Jan 22

The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK) has awarded a grant to the Dynamic Digital Twin Sewerage project. With the aim, to develop a dynamic 3D model for urban water management.


Digital spatial representations of public space are on the rise, but underground elements such as sewers are often still missing. In order to report nuisance problems more easily, unlock operational and dynamic data and model scenarios, four municipalities, Stichting RIONED, Future Insight and Nelen & Schuurmans have joined forces.



Sewerage is crucial infrastructure, most of which operates smoothly, but where bottlenecks have a great impact on the living environment. Citizens are an important source of information through reports they make. Currently, these reports cannot yet be linked to operational data. In this development and pilot phase of the dynamic Digital Twin, applications are being developed to link water nuisance information from citizens to processes surrounding the design, management and maintenance of the sewer system. These include information about extreme weather conditions (such as heavy showers or long periods of drought), maintenance status and design scenarios.


Connecting to open standards ensures that all municipalities benefit from developments from the project. Bringing information streams together leads to better considerations for the climate-proof and cost-effective design of public spaces, optimal use of citizen input and more efficient and effective sewerage management and transparent communication about it.



Pilots with four municipalities

The pilot municipalities of Breda, The Hague, Groningen and Rotterdam are enthusiastic about the potential possibilities of a Dynamic Digital Twin and would like to determine and test that scope in practice. Within each municipality, one pilot is being conducted with a specific scope. For example, the pilot in Breda focuses on (water nuisance) reports from citizens within the Digital Twin and linking them to the management of the sewer system. In concrete terms, this means that a link will be made with CROW's uniform registration method for reports BOR-MELD.


Stichting RIONED acts as an interest group to ensure that developments are in line with national standards, promotes the interests of future users and ensures that multiple 3D applications within the urban water domain, supplier independent, can benefit from the developments and results within this innovation project.


This innovation project is partly made possible by funding from the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations to improve digital services and is known by the project name 'Dynamic Digital Twin for Sewerage'. The Municipality of Groningen is the lead agency on behalf of the consortium.


Want to know more?

Want to know more about the project?


Contact Bas.

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