Dublin's digital twin, layer by layer
The city's model of the Docklands stacks terrain, buildings, infrastructure, mobility and live sensor data, and is used for flooding, crowds and housing retrofit.
Dublin City Council's Smart Cities team is building a local digital twin of the Docklands, the fast-changing district along the lower Liffey.
Six layers
The model has six layers: terrain, buildings, infrastructure, mobility, IoT devices, and a digital layer that feeds data to the twin so the council can run simulations such as flooding and crowd movement. A related pilot fuses live feeds from AI traffic sensors with other city data to create a 3D model that updates in real time, used to plan for walking and cycling, Traffic Technology Today reports.
The uses go beyond mobility. The council has also worked on a whole-life carbon twin to assess housing retrofit, and uses the models in planning decisions.
In June 2026 the Dublin Digital Twin Ecosystem won the Excellence in Architecture, Engineering and Construction Award at the Geospatial World Excellence Awards. Unlike some city twins built as a single showpiece, Dublin's is a set of smaller models tied to specific decisions, which makes it easier to judge whether each one is worth maintaining.
Research desk, Online
Stories by the IQGov research desk are written from public documents, official data and on-record statements, which are listed and linked at the end of each piece.
