"Technology should not dominate, but inspire"

Adriaenssens begins the interview with a side note. "When we look at the role of technology in the public domain, it is important to find a good balance: a balance between realising what technology can do and what the policy objectives are. We need to avoid getting into a so-called "tech push story" where technology overwhelms us and the government rushes after it with reactive legislation rather than proactive rules. This was the case, for example, with some global apps - I won't name names - that forced legislators to adjust regulations on hotels and cabs. Technology should not dominate, but inspire. Technology can be a lever to achieve major societal transitions. But that change must happen simultaneously through other levers, such as behavioural change, regulation, and the design of the public domain.

As a government, your target must be a technologically mature society, especially when it comes to smart and sustainable living, where investments must last many decades. Making all stakeholders - public sector, companies and citizens - technologically mature is our role at imec as a research centre. That's why we started City of Things, to assist the government in that process.

That process revolves around Smart and Sustainable Living in various ways. Take for example the total energy consumption in a country. Some 20% of it is residential. Of that 20%, an average of 75% goes to heating homes. That's a crucial share, hence the importance the government puts on isolating your home. And when we talk about isolation, we're talking about the construction industry. Technology plays an important role in this, which is why at imec we attach great importance to local energy networks, demand-response systems and to developing the next generation of solar cells that can be integrated into facades or windows, for example.

Let me give another illustration of the importance of technology in the development towards smart and sustainable living. A study by the University of Antwerp mapped out the logistics flows in a city. What was the outcome? Of all the logistic kilometres driven in a city, barely 2% comes from couriers delivering mail packages. The largest logistics flow is the construction sector, with 36% of all kilometres. So you're back at the table with the same partner if you want to make urban logistics more sustainable. This can be done in various ways, for example by developing other business models, working with window times for the logistics flows or by making micro deliveries of building materials. But to organize that, you need a lot of data. And thus technology. Because you need to collect information to be able to make data-driven decisions, necessary to make our inhabited world future-proof."

In 2019, imec published a vision paper mapping the needs of an open smart city. In that paper, imec stated that a smart city should become more than the sum of its smart parts. What Jan Adriaenssens means by that, he illustrates with an example.

"Not so long ago, a Flemish city organized an experiment. In a particular neighbourhood it put smart garbage cans on the street, with sensors that collected data to better organize waste collection and prevent fly-tipping. The pilot project was successful and the city issued a call for tenders to equip the other districts with the smart garbage cans as well.

But what happened? That tender was won by another company, whose system was not compatible with that of the pilot district. Consequently, the city now has two dashboards: for the original pilot district and for the other districts of the city. This makes optimization difficult, as no data exchange is possible.

To create the smart city, the government needs to make smart decisions. These decisions must be based as much as possible on objective data and criteria. That's where Adriaenssens sees a lot of potential in setting up digital twins.

"A digital twin is a so-called "cross-domain decision support system" which helps to support policy decisions. It is "cross-domain," because it encompasses multiple policy domains, policy levels, and geographic locations.

Such a digital twin is thus eminently inter-operable. It links together data on e.g. traffic, air quality, noise pollution, economic activity, weather and energy in order to solve particular policy questions. This data can originate from real-time information, but the system can also be fed with historical information in order to identify trends.

That data makes cross-domain prediction and simulation possible. You can then start doing short-term forecasting, or even nowcasting. What will happen in the coming hours just before, during and after a rain shower? Simulation is also possible in the long term. What is the effect of putting an apartment building or a bus station in a certain place? What is its effect on traffic, air and water quality, logistics and even climate objectives? You can check all scenarios with a digital twin, combining data and technology from different policy levels and domains."