On May 9th, 2023, the Living-in.EU's Education & Capacity Building sub-group, coordinated by the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL), hosted a webinar on Building Smarter Communities: Empowering User Participation in Digital Twin Design. The webinar aimed to equip participants with practical methods and successful case studies of user and citizen involvement in the design, development, and use of Digital Twins, promoting effective and inclusive citizen engagement practices.

The event featured presentations from various experts at Forum Virium Helsinki, the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), and imec. The speakers explored how user-centric design approaches can be used to implement smart city solutions and improve decision-making, and they shared case studies and examples of user engagement in Digital Twin design:

• Urban digital twins for citizens? Juho-Pekka Virtanen, Forum Virium Helsinki (FVH)
• Dynamic Visualizations to Enhance Citizens Engagement: the experience of DVECE project Josep Maria Salanova Grau & Maria Konstantinidou – Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH)
• Scoping urban digital twins via imec's co-creative innovation management approach: PRECINCT, Bruges & City of Brussels use cases Dimitri Schuurman – imec

The interactive roundtable included a Q&A session with the speakers and comments from the audience. The webinar concluded with a wrap-up and conclusion by Giacomo Lozzi, ENoLL.

If you missed the webinar, the presentations are available here, while the recording is at this link.

Please note that the activities of this sub-group are restricted to the signatories (public authorities) of the Living-in.EU declaration only. However, as we are launching the activities now, we decided to open this webinar to potential signatories and supporters.