The conundrum in smart city governance: Interoperability and compatibility in an ever-growing ecosystem of digital twins
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Abstract Today, technological developments are ever-growing yet fragmented. Alongside inconsistent digital approaches and attitudes across city administrations, such developments have made it difficult to reap the benefits of city digital twins. Bringing together experiences from five research projects, this paper discusses these digital twins based on two digital integration methodologies—systems and semantic integration. We revisit the nature of the underlying technologies, and their implications for interoperability and compatibility in the context of planning processes and smart urbanism. Semantic approaches present a new opportunity for bidirectional data flows that can inform both governance processes and technological systems to co-create, cross-pollinate, and support optimal outcomes. Building on this opportunity, we suggest that considering the technological dimension as a new addition to the trifecta of economic, environmental, and social sustainability goals that guide planning processes, can aid governments to address this conundrum of fragmentation, interoperability, and compatibility.
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The application of semantic technology in smart city innovations confirms its suitability for dealing with interoperability issues and the modelling/annotation of sensor readings.
“Furthermore, the outstanding success of the application of semantic technology in the context of smart city innovations confirms its suitability for dealing with interoperability issues [23][24][25] and the modelling/annotation [26,27] of sensor readings.”
From Semantic-Driven Approach for Validation of IoT Streaming Data in Trustable Smart City Decision-Making and Monitoring Systems (2025) · cites this paper as [23]
Section 2.2 describes semantic technologies as suitable candidates for addressing interoperability issues in smart cities. But section 3.2 calls the example digital twin largely experimental, so the paper does not establish the “outstanding success” claimed. The sensor-reading clause has separate citations [26,27] and is not attributed to this source. (LLM, conf=0.87)
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Farag, A. A., & Doheim, R. M. (2025) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/b978-0-443-33333-0.00009-0 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Digital twins across the entire life cycle vision and reality
Vilsmeier, J., & Salehi, V. (2025) · Journal of Intelligent System of Systems Lifecycle Management · doi:10.71015/d3tp7685 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Navigating Risks: A Deep Dive into Smart City Infrastructure
Shah, N. H., Ansari, S. K., Hussain, M. A., Fayaz, R., & Khan, D. T. (2026) · Lecture notes in electrical engineering · doi:10.1007/978-981-95-6063-9_38 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Decentralisation in public sector data platforms: A pathway to enhancing public value?
Thabit, S., Degkwitz, T., Fadmastuti, M., & Mora, L. (2026) · Government Information Quarterly · doi:10.1016/j.giq.2026.102149 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Zhang, Y. (2024) · Highlights in Science Engineering and Technology · doi:10.54097/ffe66c60 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Hofmeister, M., Lee, K. F., Tsai, Y., Müller, M., Nagarajan, K. V., Mosbach, S., Akroyd, J., & Kraft, M. (2024) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.4766766 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Nikolić, D., & Ewart, I. (2023) · Proceedings e report · doi:10.36253/10.36253/979-12-215-0289-3.106
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Modular Smart City Digital Twins: A Survey of Key Technologies
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Case Studies of AI-AR Applications in Urban Planning and Emergency Management
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Geospatial Technology in the Smart City Paradigm
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Nachhaltigkeit und Wise Cities
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Industrialising Digital Twins: Governance of Data, Metadata, and AI in Production System Ecosystems
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- Authors
- Quek, H. Y., Sielker, F., Akroyd, J., Bhave, A. N., von Richthofen, A., Herthogs, P., Yamu, C. V. D. L., Wan, L., Nochta, T., Burgess, G., Lim, M. Q., Mosbach, S., & Kraft, M.
- Affiliations
- The Cambridge Centre for Advanced Research and Education in Singapore (SG)
- TU Wien (AT)
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- CMCL Innovations (United Kingdom) (GB)
- Singapore-ETH Centre (SG)
- OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University (NO)
- University of Birmingham (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Sielker, Franziska
- ORCID
- Venue
- Data & Policy
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2023
- Volume
- 5
- ISSN
- 2632-3249 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4322709930
- Cited by
- 48
- References
- 57
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 2
- FWCI
- 5.30
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Data & Policy (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- University of Birmingham Research Portal (University of Birmingham) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- ETH Zürich Research Collection
- Funders
- Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
- National Research Foundation
- Singapore-ETH Centre
- Ove Arup Foundation
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
- Innovate UK
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Media Technology › Smart Cities and Technologies
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Building and Construction › 3D Modeling in Geospatial Applications
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › E-Government and Public Services
- Keywords
- smart city governance, digital twin, interoperability, compatibility, semantic integration, system integration, urban planning, smart urbanism, bidirectional data flow, sustainability goals, municipal government
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