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The City of Helsinki is a leader in deploying City Models and urban digital twins. In May 2026, it hosted a weeklong gathering for the 5CC+ cities. The highlight of the week was the city modeling seminar, which showcased the latest technologies and use cases.
The six-city 5CC+ collaborative
5CC+ is a collaboration among six cities: Hamburg, Helsinki, Prague, Rotterdam, Vienna, and Singapore. The members share experiences and perspectives on city modeling and digital twins to support efficient urban planning, sustainable development, and smart infrastructure. The cities adopt open data standards, use similar technologies, and collaborate with application providers such as Virtual City Systems and Future Insight.
The group meets annually in one of the partner cities, and this time it was Helsinki’s turn. The week was filled with discussions of timely topics, excursions, and sauna sessions. In addition to these in-person events, group members regularly exchange experiences and spar with each other online.
PechaKucha presentations on the hottest topics
Senior Specialist Lauri Lemmenlehti of the Helsinki Executive Office’s 3D+ team, together with his colleague Senior Specialist Enni Airaksinen, organized the Helsinki event brilliantly. The cities’ presentations followed the PechaKucha format: 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide.
Lauri moderated the event and introduced 5CC+ before the rapid-fire segment. Enni then provided an overview of Helsinki’s 40-year experience in city modeling and shared recent use cases. Helsinki maintains two city models: one in CityGML and the other in a mesh format. Digital twins and applications, such as those for solar or geothermal energy potential analysis, use these base models.
The PechaKuchas from other partner cities showcased various approaches to city models and digital twins:
- Filiz Demirel-Schlueter discussed Hamburg’s Unity-based immersive VR application for city planning, collaboration, and decision-making.
- Jiří Čtyroký of the Institute of Planning and Development Prague explained how the city uses both 2D and 3D data for public asset management, urban planning, and analysis.
- Christian Wisse of the City of Rotterdam presented use cases for 3D city modeling, including energy transition analyses, an underground asset registry, and tree mapping.
- As Sandy Teo Shen Ni explained, Singapore is using AI to enhance aerial and mobile mapping processes and to automatically generate datasets from various assets, such as solar panels.
- Hubert Lehner of Vienna presented the city’s GeoTwin program. 3D geographic and asset data support functions such as planning, city asset management, and building permitting. He demonstrated a 3D StoryMap of a cycling highway that integrates a 3D model with a storyboard.
- Tallinn’s guest presenter, Abdelrahman Elkhatib, explained how the city aims to build a shared platform that integrates data from various departments. One application is a simulation built with the Unreal game engine that allows users to walk among AI avatars and drive in the city.
All the presenters emphasized the need for realistic, comprehensive 3D models and digital twins that integrate data from multiple sources. “3D is a common language,” Abdelrahman said.
The two remaining PechaKuchas showed how Helsinki’s Urban Environment division uses digital twins to solve practical problems.
Helsinki’s digital twins for practical use cases
Tiina Talvitie, Helsinki’s City Geodesist, Head of City Survey Services and Head of the Spatial Development and Digital Twins unit, focused on four use cases: city planning, construction and permitting, green environment, and traffic and infrastructure.
In a zoning Proof-of-Concept, residents were invited to review and comment on alternative plans via a digital twin. Interactive 3D is also well suited to presenting plot divisions, architectural competition entries, and future land use in dense urban areas.
Finland adopted BIM-based permitting in 2026. This allows permit applicants and neighboring property owners to view the new design within the city model. Realistic visualizations are much easier to understand than traditional 2D projections. The city is also testing this technique to market its residential developments.
Digital twins serve decision-makers, for example, in planning green environmental and infrastructure investments.
Many of the digital use cases stem from experiments Tiina and her team have fostered. For example, a forward-looking use case for 3D drone traffic management and city aviation began as a pilot project. An experimental culture is essential to discovering beneficial uses for digital twins.
What’s new and what’s next
Suvi Uotila’s presentation outlined the roadmap for city modeling in Helsinki. Suvi is the team lead for the Spatial Data Center and oversees the technical aspects of city models.
Helsinki stands out for the frequency of data updates. Aerial scans, including Airborne Laser Scanning, are conducted annually. Similarly, new CityGML building models are updated as soon as they are surveyed.
The city is seeking ways to make the data collection process more efficient and automated. For example, it recently tested a novel aerial technology: Kelluu, an autonomous, hydrogen-powered airship from a Finnish tech startup.
Helsinki’s goal is to represent all of its built and natural environments as CityGML objects. Work is underway on trees (1.6 million) and bridges. Transportation, water areas, and street furniture are next.
Suvi also mentioned innovative technologies the city is experimenting with. Perhaps one of the most promising is Gaussian Splatting, which provides a lightweight alternative to 3D mesh models while maintaining high visual quality.
As other presenters noted, urban digital twins and city models encompass many formats and technologies. Helsinki’s ultimate goal is to provide a single platform for 3D data, regardless of its origin. That will enable the city’s vision of the city model as the user interface for all urban data.
The title image features the “mini expo” held alongside the seminar. This content is a collaboration with the City of Helsinki.