ISCN Global Mixer | HAL-Plan: Digital Twin Halle (Saale)

Urban Digital Twins are one of the most discussed topics in the current smart city context. In urban planning, they refer to digital replicas of cities where simulations are generated using real-time and existing data. Digital twins can simulate for example traffic flows, climatic conditions, and the impacts of different building types within a digital model of the city.

In this episode of the ISCN Global Mixer, Katja Gehrmann and Albert Steinbach from the City of Halle (Saale) gave an introduction to HAL-Plan, the digital twin of the City of Halle (Saale). A 3D model of the city serves as the foundation for developing all key components of the software, including an Economic Development Tool (e.g. for land management a cadastre with location data and visualization of commercial spaces and real estate offerings); a Planning Tool for creating planning scenarios; an Ecology Tool for analyzing and evaluating environmental impacts on planning areas and a Mobility Module for including transport infrastructure into the planning process.

The speakers described how their project is set up from the get go for an interoperable scaling and replication, so that their efforts can be shared with all cities interested. As a basis, it uses official geodata from upper government levels, whose provision is continuously improved in Germany like in many other countries. The modular software architecture allows for all sorts of localized adaptations and additional components, while the multi-client capability enables other municipalities to straightforwardly use the infrastructure and add its own right structure to it. Since HAL-Plan follows the public money, public code mandate of the funding programme for Model Projects Smart City from the German Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building, the solution will be made available open source towards the end of the project at the end of 2026. 

Already at present, the city has invited 11 other German municipalities to freely join in testing the solution and to share their experiences with it. This sparks an intermunicipal cooperation which can iteratively improve the development. The speakers reported how the digital twin already is inducing cultural changes in the way cross-departmental cooperation works in their city and thus welcome any follow-up and exchanges with interested parties.

For details on HAL-Plan, check out the recording (18:30 min) of the keynote above.
 

This event is part of the ISCN Global Mixer, a series of events organized by the International Smart Cities Network. The presentations cover a wide range of topics related to international smart city approaches and provide exciting insights into urban digitalization worldwide - in just 30 minutes.