Download the event summary
🔗 Download the summary directly here.
On June 11 2026, the OpenTwin International Ideathon brought together experts from public administration, infrastructure, research, cities, and projects from different European countries to exchange and share experiences about the development of Digital Twins across Europe.
Research findings on cross-border Digital Twins
Marie Blüml and Jonathan Fuchs from the OpenTwin project presented research findings on Cross-border Digital Twins in mobility, infrastructure, and cities. The results show that cross-border applications can support shared planning, simulation, monitoring, and decision-making. Their implementation, however, requires more than technical integration. Shared objectives, suitable governance structures, interoperable data models, secure data exchange, and stable long-term funding, among others, are equally important.
Access the research findings
Keynote on national Digital Twin structures
The keynote by Alexandra Luck, Programme Director of the UK National Digital Twin Programme, provided insights into the further development of national Digital Twin structures and their role in enabling coordinated infrastructure management.
🔗 The keynote can be found here.
Workshops on interoperability, governance, and data spaces
The three interactive workshops of the Ideathon examined the focus topics of interoperability, governance, scalability, mobility data spaces, and standards in more depth. Participants highlighted the importance of use-case-driven development, semantic interoperability, modular components, federated architectures, and trusted data exchange.
Breakout-Session 1: Interoperability, Data and Technical Infrastructure
- Impulse 1: Waseem Al Uslam Peer | DB InfraGO AG | FP1-MOTIONAL
🔗 Download the presentation here. - Impulse 2: Andreas Heckmann, Ph.D. | German Aerospace Center (DLR) | FP1-MOTIONAL
🔗 Download the presentation here.
Breakout-Session 2: Organisation, Governance and Scalability
- Impulse 1: Niccolò Fattirolli | olivoENERGY | Begonia
🔗 Download the presentation here. - Impulse 2: Jonas Merbeth | Daten-Kompetenzzentrum Städte und Regionen (DKSR) | Twin4Resilience
🔗 Download the presentation here.
Breakout-Session 3: Mobility Data Spaces and Standards
- Impulse 1: Sophie Meszaros | Open & Agile Smart Cities & Communitites | European Data Space for Smart and Sustainable Cities and Communities (DS4SSCC)
🔗 Download the presentation here. - Impulse 2: Philippe Calvez, Ph.D.| acatech National Academy of Science and Engineering e.V. | deployEMDS
🔗 Download will be provided shortly.
Panel discussion: Digital Twins across Europe – Collaboration and Lessons Learned
Lastly, the panel discussed how Digital Twins can move from temporary pilots to operational systems. Clear responsibilities, sustainable funding, reusable solutions, shared standards, and capacity building were identified as important conditions for wider implementation.
Event summary
The detailed findings of the event are condensed in the OpenTwin International Ideathon 2026 Event Summary,
🔗 which can be downloaded below.
Acknowledgements
We thank all keynote, impulse, and panel speakers, as well as all participants, for sharing their experience and contributing to the discussions.
The event was organised by the Think Tank iRights.Lab within the OpenTwin project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport through the mFUND funding programme.
