The livable smart city

During the 'Livable Smart Cities by Design' conference in Amsterdam, the central topic was the city of the future. Geodan, the Municipality of Amsterdam, and the Johan Cruijff ArenA organized the event within the framework of the WeMakeThe.city festival. During the conference, participants entered into partnerships and launched tools.

Digital twin: Discover and experience the city of the future

Geodan brings together all publicly available digital information, using it to construct a digital copy of a city, which you can visit virtually. In this digital twin you’ll be able to visualize the impact of all kinds of processes and future plans with the help of smart models, allowing you to experience what different scenarios will look like in Virtual Reality. How will the construction of a residential tower impact its surroundings? Or how will diverting a road affect traffic flow? This digital replica of a city will help its residents and decision-makers oversee and understand the various processes involved.

Ecocraft: Gaming our way to a more sustainable planet

In Ecocraft you place a copy of the real world (a digital twin) into Minecraft’s game environment. Every building, every road, and every tree in the Netherlands can be found in Ecocraft. If you add to that the data on, among other things, energy, mobility, and the population, you create a game in which the impact of plans on the city can be made visible immediately. All public Dutch energy data is available in Ecocraft, making it fun for children to come up with solutions for the energy transition. How many solar panels should you install in a street to meet local energy demands? Or would it cheaper to install one wind turbine for the entire neighborhood? The result of the measures chosen is calculated immediately. Ecocraft is an educational tool as well as a civic participation tool supported by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

Working on the UN’s sustainable development goals together

193 countries have signed the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which focus on the more sustainable use of energy and raw materials. To achieve these goals, cooperation between government, industry, knowledge institutes, and citizens is essential, but so is an exchange between generations: children are the decision makers of tomorrow and must be prepared for their future role. Ecocraft helps. UNEP and the EduGIS foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 23 June, stating that they will endeavor to make the data that’s necessary to make the world more sustainable publicly available. This can then be linked to Ecocraft. We started close to home in Amsterdam Zuidoost, but Warsaw soon became the first major city in Europe to join in.

“Children are the decision makers of tomorrow and must be prepared for their future role.”