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Digital Twin Platform for Climate Impact Visualization

Solution Overview

Wellington developed a digital twin—a virtual, interactive representation of the city that enables residents, local government, city planners, and engineers to visualize climate change impacts and explore adaptation options.[3] This approach creates a lifelike digital representation that allows visualization of complex information in a meaningful way, helping people understand how the city works, how it will fare as the climate changes, and what the outcomes of policy decisions will be.[10][6] The initiative was recognized as one of 15 innovative projects addressing climate change worldwide and received US$1 million in the Bloomberg Mayors Challenge.[3]

Technical Components

The digital twin functions as an interactive, virtual model built from a wide range of data including GIS maps and city-wide sensors, designed to look and behave like the real world.[6] Wellington City Council streamlined the ingestion of GIS data with bespoke tools to make their pipeline of presenting different use cases much more efficient, as councils like Wellington deal with huge quantities of geospatial information.[9] The model was built leveraging Unreal Gaming Engine as part of the tech stack to ensure it is flexible and scalable, capable of showing the past, present and future of Wellington in an evocative and engaging way.[9] The system incorporates the latest climate science data provided by NIWA, GNS, Wellington Water and other agencies, alongside te ao Māori perspectives.[10] The implementation uses smart city technologies with real-time data to provide transportation statistics for bus, rail, ferry, bike and car, air traffic visualizations, cycle sensor data including trip counts and direction of travel, and car park availability.[12] Geospatial data was pulled from Wellington city to create this digital twin.[12]

Implementation Details

Wellington City Council led the development of this virtual reality model project, with NEC as a key partner, to develop a model of Wellington's central city using 3D, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) techniques to better communicate information about Wellington and its hazards.[5] Work on developing the digital twin was led by Wellington City Council's Digital Innovation team and was expected to take three years to complete.[2] The city drew on its gaming and tech sectors to develop the 3D/VR model and simulations of how the central city could be affected by events such as earthquakes and sea level rise.[5] Wellington City Council leveraged Bloomberg Global Mayor's Challenge funding to significantly improve the underlying Digital City Model.[9] The US$1 million Bloomberg Mayors Challenge award supported the development of the video game-like version of Wellington's capital.[3] The external funding for this project ends in July 2025, but the teams at Wellington City Council are preparing for its long-term installation for community use.[10] An augmented reality app was being developed in partnership with Victoria University of Wellington, the Wellington City Council and NEC, New Zealand.[11] Buildmedia created a digital twin of Wellington City in collaboration with the Wellington City Council, using their live city data.[12]

Benefits and Impacts

The model creates a virtual, interactive reflection of the city, enabling a higher proportion of the residents to be involved in planning and action for climate mitigation.[1] The council uses this digital twin to co-design climate change adaptation solutions with Wellingtonians, connecting mātauranga Māori, city planning data, climate science and community values.[6] The project communicates the complexities of climate impacts and adaptation planning in an accessible way, encouraging participation as decision-makers and other Wellingtonians are able to clearly understand local impacts.[6] Wellington developed a touchscreen Digital City Model (DCM) that enables residents to visualize the impacts of varying levels of climate change and natural disasters, including views of potential effects within their local neighborhood.[1] The council hoped the tool would simplify a challenging yet critical topic and boost citizen engagement on climate adaptation.[3] Through the use of modular development, this is now more than a climate change tool—it is a city tool that can be used for endless visualisation.[9] Decision makers can visualize unbuilt infrastructure and unbuilt properties in this realistic city model to communicate future projects and see how they integrate within a built landscape.[12]

Climate Adaptation Relevance

Wellington city council developed a virtual reality simulator allowing users to travel anywhere in the city, stand on the street, and see the impact of rising sea levels.[4] Wellington City Council developed a virtual reality environment where users can raise the sea level in the capital by up to 6m to help illustrate the projected effects of climate change.[8] From the digital twin screen, users are able to travel back to the city's past and into the future, modelled on the latest scientific projections, and see what protections against the rising tides—from sea walls to mangroves—will look like, cost and how long they'll last.[3] As a coastal city that is highly exposed to climate change impacts and with few options for relocating infrastructure, businesses and homes, it is critical to enable evidence-based climate adaptation decisions in the next two to three years to respond to the climate and ecological emergencies declared by Council.[2][3]

Business Analysis

The City Council won the Bloomberg Global Mayors Challenge in 2022 and expanded the project with the $1 million prize fund to fully engage the community in helping to co-design climate change adaptation solutions.[7] The technology is free and the project empowers Māori, businesses and organisations to adapt together.[6] The open-source code for Wellington's Digital Twin is available for other coastal cities to access and utilise for their own purposes.[2] Wellington City Council will soon launch a City Development Tool as a way to give other team members access to their model without using specialised gaming software.[9] The project aligns with Wellington's goal of being a net zero carbon capital by 2050 and other city/region-wide initiatives including Planning for Growth, Paneke Pōneke (bike network plan) and Let's Get Wellington Moving.[2] Wellington is scaling its existing digital twin model to coordinate community action across the city to address climate change and move to a post-carbon future.[1] Our Changing City is being hosted by Wellington venues and community centres during 2025, including Te Papa, Wellington Zoo, Zealandia and Victoria University of Wellington, with free access during normal opening hours or listed event times.[10]

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