Cities across Europe are building digital twins and immersive services, but most of these remain difficult to connect or scale. TWINE (Twin-based Web Interoperable Network for Engagement) is a new Horizon Europe project that started in September 2026 and aims to change that. On the 24th of September, we held a kick-off meeting for the new SMIT-coordinated project.
Over 36 months, we will build open, federated Web 4.0 infrastructure that enables digital twins and virtual-world services from different cities and providers to work together in ways that citizens, administrations and SMEs can trust. The project will run cross-city pilots in Rotterdam, Tampere and Flanders, with replication kits and procurement models to help other cities adopt the results.
Besides managing the project, SMIT brings the social science perspective to a largely technical consortium. We lead requirements analysis and co-creation with stakeholders in the pilot cities, design pilot validation, and study sustainability models for open-source public infrastructure. That research feeds into policy recommendations on how cities can build shared virtual-world infrastructure.