On 17 November 2025, the Immersive Sustainability Lab (ISLab) at Helsinki XR Center / Metropolia University of Applied Sciences will host the City Digital Twins Summit at Arabia Campus, Helsinki.
The Summit brings together a wide cross-section of Finland’s growing city digital twin ecosystem; municipalities, technology providers, research partners, and public sector organizations, to exchange experiences, align priorities, and explore collaboration opportunities that advance smarter and more sustainable cities.
A Shared Effort Toward Smarter Cities
City-scale digital twins are rapidly becoming dynamic, data-driven systems rather than static visualisations, combining GIS, BIM, IoT, environmental data and real-time analytics to support cities in planning, monitoring and managing infrastructure, mobility and energy more effectively, and in communicating complex systems to citizens in meaningful ways. Globally, the market for urban planning digital twins already exceeds USD 8 billion (2024) and is projected to grow more than tenfold by 2034. While across all sectors, digital-twin technologies are expected to surpass USD 150 billion by 2030.
At Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) this year, several key developments highlighted how rapidly the field of urban digital twins is evolving. NVIDIA presented its Smart City AI Blueprint, built around the Omniverse platform, synthetic data generation using Cosmos models, and vision-AI agents, demonstrating how simulation, live data, and digital twins are converging in real-time urban operations. Collaborations between major GIS and geospatial players, notably Esri working with NVIDIA in the U.S., showed how live sensor feeds and digital twin maps can enhance operational decision-making, from traffic optimization to infrastructure monitoring. Meanwhile, Bentley Systems showcased how combining geospatial modeling, open APIs, and AI-driven insights enables cities to manage assets, emergency response, and networks more efficiently. Across sessions, a clear consensus emerged: digital twins are no longer limited to design or planning stages but are becoming core components of operational systems, resilience planning, and citizen-facing services, with AI, real-time data, and simulation now indispensable to smart city strategies.
In Finland, this momentum is already visible. Cities such as Helsinki, Espoo, Tampere, Vantaa, and Oulu, together with innovation organizations like Forum Virium Helsinki and energy, telecom, and infrastructure partners such as Helen and Elisa, are developing practical use cases that link data, design, and decision-making. Finnish companies including Sitowise, Sweco, Younite AI, Gravicon, and Datacubist, together with research and technology collaborators such as RISE Sweden, Japan’s PLATEAU program, and the Cluster Metaverse Platform, are contributing to a growing international network that links digital twins, XR, and sustainable urban innovation. Within this broader landscape, industry leaders such as Esri, Bentley Systems, Dassault Systèmes, Hexagon, and NVIDIA are driving advances in AI-powered simulation, interoperability, and real-time data visualization, helping cities worldwide turn digital models into operational decision-support systems.
The City Digital Twins Summit builds on this broad foundation, offering a space for open dialogue between municipalities, industry and research to surface key needs, shared challenges and practical next-steps for collaboration across the ecosystem.
The Immersive Sustainability Lab and Metropolia’s Role
The Immersive Sustainability Lab (ISLab), an initiative of the Helsinki XR Center and supported in part by the AI Start Project, reflects Metropolia University of Applied Sciences’ broader commitment to developing smart and digital solutions for cities. This commitment is embodied in Metropolia’s Smart and Creative City Innovation Hub and the Metadata to Metaverse (MD2MV) project funded by Business Finland, which explores how data-rich city models and digital twins can merge with immersive environments to create more participatory and human-centered urban services.
Aligned with the Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences’ mission to act as ecosystem connectors and RDI facilitators, ISLab initiated the City Digital Twins Summit to strengthen collaboration across municipalities, companies, and research organizations. The Lab focuses on how emerging and immersive technologies can support sustainable urban transformation and bridge the gap between research, design, and real-world implementation.
From Dialogue to Collaboration
Designed as a working forum, the City Digital Twins Summit goes beyond presentations to foster active exchange and co-creation among cities, companies, and research partners. Through concise cases and group discussions, participants will align their efforts around key interconnected themes:
- Municipal priorities and data needs for 2026–27, addressing how cities can scale from pilot projects toward long-term, service-oriented digital twins;
- Interoperability and accessibility, exploring open standards, shared data models, and cross-platform integration as key enablers for collaboration;
- Funding and commercialization pathways, including how national and European programs can support sustainable operations and value creation;
- Visualization, XR, and AI integration, examining how immersive interfaces and simulation tools, from real-time geospatial dashboards to AI-assisted modeling, can make city systems more intuitive, transparent, and participatory.
Inspired by recent developments highlighted at the Smart City Expo World Congress, the Summit emphasizes the emerging convergence of AI, digital twins, and real-time data simulation in creating operational and decision-support systems for cities.
The City Digital Twin Sandbox at Match XR
On 18 November, the conversation continues at Match XR 2025, the largest XR and emerging technology event in the Nordics. The City Digital Twin Sandbox, hosted by ISLab, will showcase selected cases from cities, companies, and research partners.
The Sandbox will visualize how urban data, simulation, and immersive technologies can come together to make city systems more accessible and understandable. It also marks the one-year anniversary of the Immersive Sustainability Lab, celebrating its role as a bridge between sustainability, technology, and design.
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