Kick-off workshop for the adapTWIN project at Essen Town Hall
On 27 February 2026, the kick-off workshop for the project "adapTWIN – Ensuring accelerated planning processes through digital twins to take into account urban climate change adaptation with a focus on green and blue infrastructure" took place at Essen City Hall. Around 25 participants from the project team and representatives of the Essen city administration came together to discuss project goals, methodological building blocks and expectations for the collaboration.
The aim of adapTWIN is to develop an Urban Digital Twin (UDT) that will significantly accelerate planning processes in the context of climate impact adaptation and make them more robust. The focus is particularly on green and blue infrastructure measures and their impact on heat and heavy rainfall events.
The project is based on three central components:
- Vegetation modelling: This component models the growth, development and climatic effects of urban vegetation, such as roadside trees and green spaces. This allows reliable answers to questions about the effectiveness of additional planting, suitable replacement planting and development paths over time.
- Water balance modelling: This component focuses on runoff processes, infiltration, flow paths and emergency waterways during heavy rainfall events. The aim is to provide a differentiated assessment of flood risks and the impact of planned measures.
- Digital twin as a planning tool: The modelled data is brought together in an integrated, user-friendly planning tool. The Urban Digital Twin makes it possible to quickly simulate scenarios and planning alternatives and evaluate them comparatively in the form of "what-if" analyses.
In the concluding discussion with Essen City Council, numerous practical areas of application emerged. Information on flow paths, infiltration volumes and emergency waterways as a result of heavy rainfall was identified as particularly relevant. The need to be able to quantify the effect of additional trees or replacement plantings was also emphasised – including the question of how many years it takes for a measure to lead to a measurable improvement compared to the status quo.
There are high expectations for the possibility of evaluating different planning alternatives on a scenario basis and at short notice. Comprehensible scenario descriptions are particularly important in heavy rainfall risk management. It was also pointed out that the tool must be compatible with ongoing planning and existing work processes.
Considerable added value is also seen in the field of urban climate and heat: The often rough climate analysis and verbal arguments used to date could be supplemented by small-scale, fast and cost-effective modelling. Up-to-date and differentiated results would not only improve the technical basis for decision-making, but also strengthen communication with politicians and the population. In the future, it will also be necessary to examine the extent to which the economic effects of measures can be represented in the tool.
Overall, the participants associated adapTWIN with the hope of significantly accelerating planning processes – especially in the context of public participation – through early, transparent and clear information bases. The workshop thus marked a successful starting point for further project-related cooperation between science and municipal practice.
