Appling digital twin models to built environment. Methodological approaches and comparative experiences

Since the second half of the twentieth century, the methodologies related to Digital Twin Models (DTM) used as predictive tools for production processes have become increasingly diffused in the industrial sector. This methodology has also been progressively tested for the built environment, technological as well as transport networks, with some interesting experiments in various cities around the world. The ecological, energetic, and digital transitions underway, which have undergone a strong acceleration between 2019 and 2022, also as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic crisis, find in the DTM approach an extraordinary predictive and simulation tool for the complex activities related to the built environments; such methodology seems the most promising one in order to address the growing problems of managing complex urban systems, facing global challenges posed by climate change, demographic transformations and pandemics, with the aim of assuring the sustainability and resilience of the cities as well as the citizens quality of life in the medium and long term.