Smart Cities and Digital Twins in Lower Austria

SCiNDTiLA: Smart Cities and Digital Twins in Lower Austria

Innovative Research at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences

The SCiNDTiLA research project is being conducted at the Data Intelligence research group at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Torsten Priebe, in cooperation with the University for Continuing Education Krems. The goal is to develop smart city concepts specifically tailored to smaller towns and rural regions of Lower Austria.

Project Content:

SCiNDTiLA utilizes research findings on smart cities and digital twins – digital representations of real cities – and adapts them to the needs of Lower Austria. The focus is on developing sustainable solutions for municipal challenges in small and medium-sized towns.

The project combines insights from complexity theory with computational social sciences to design models for smart cities. These models represent complex social and technological interactions and help to make data-driven decisions for sustainable urban development. A special focus is placed on the transferability of solutions to rural regions.

Project priorities:

• Smart City Research: Pooling and transferring relevant findings to smaller urban and rural areas.
• Sustainable Governance: Developing new concepts for locally adapted administrative processes.
• Digital Twin: Creating a virtual city model for analyzing and visualizing sustainable scenarios. Specifically, use cases have been identified in the areas of traffic planning (shared spaces, bypasses) and population growth/public services.
• Proof-of-Concept Projects: Collaboration with municipalities to test smart solutions in practice. The project works closely with the State of Lower Austria and the cities of Baden and Traismauer.

Outlook:

SCiNDTiLA connects municipalities, research institutions, and policymakers to promote sustainable innovation. The developed concepts and experiences are intended to serve as a model for smart regions in Lower Austria and shape the regional smart city strategy in the long term.