Urban Challenges, Digital Solutions
UrbanAIR is a Horizon European innovation project that equips cities with next-generation planning tools to tackle air quality, heat, and climate resilience challenges. The projects aims to develop a digital twin prototype within the Destination Earth framework. It covers a diverse set of multidisciplinary themes: environmental modelling, AI, behavioural simulations, decision making, and digital twins technologies. UrbanAIR enables data-informed and future-ready urban decision-making.
Cities today face increasing challenges: deteriorating air quality, intensifying heat, and climate-induced hazards that threaten public health, infrastructure, and the overall liveability of urban spaces. Traditional planning tools often fall short — they lack the spatial precision, behavioural context, and real-time capabilities required for effective, adaptive responses.
UrbanAIR bridges this gap by offering next-generation decision-support tools that integrate physics-based environmental modelling, artificial intelligence, behavioural simulation, and digital twin technology. These tools empower cities to explore future scenarios, evaluate potential interventions, and make informed decisions that promote sustainable and resilient urban development.
UrbanAIR partners with cities to ensure its tools are grounded in real-world needs and experiences:
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Action Cities
Antwerp and Barcelona — Co-developing and piloting tools in live urban environments. -
Learning Cities
Bristol, Rotterdam, and Paris — Supporting adoption and capacity-building through collaborative learning.
As a key partner in UrbanAIR, our contribution is centred on advancing urban-scale environmental modelling and enabling smart, data-driven decision-making through innovative technical components.
VITO's role
VITO’s ATMOSYS team is contributing to the following key activities in collaboration with VITO's climate modelling team:
- Physics based modelling for air quality and heat: We play a pivotal role in deepening the integration of air quality and climate within the digital twin framework Destination Earth Service Platform piloted in Antwerp and Barcelona. This work aims to create street scale, actionable environmental models tailored to local built environment. Our objectives include:
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Advancing the integration of ATMO-Flow into the digital twin architecture to enable scenario simulations that reflect both environmental and urban planning complexities.
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Supporting and aligning model chains with the practical needs and priorities of local stakeholders, ensuring that outputs are relevant, interpretable, and fit-for-purpose in real urban contexts.
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VITO's climate modelling team will incorporate its UrbClim model within the digital twin environment.
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- Data assimilation and AI-supported urban models: We are also actively contributing to the development and application of data assimilation (DA) techniques, uncertainty quantification methods, and the use of AI to streamline complex model operations. Our key objectives in this area are:
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Advancing DA methodologies, building on our strengths alongside partners such as BSC, CERFACS and TU Delft, to improve the accuracy and responsiveness of urban climate and air quality models.
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Aligning these advanced tools with real-world use cases, ensuring that model results are both scientifically robust and practically useful for urban planners and decision-makers.
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For more information visit the UrbanAIR website!
Year: 2025 – 2028
Project partners: Delft University of Technology - coordination, ARUP, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Bern University of Applied Sciences, CERFACS, Future Needs, Imperial College London, KNMI, Leibniz University Hannover, METEO France, NORCE, Resilient Cities Network, Science and Technology Facilities Council, SMHI, Technical University Ilmenau, Université Toulouse III, University of Freiburg.
Website: UrbanAIR
