Members of the Resilient HydroTwin project team recently participated in the International Conference on Resilient Systems 2026, themed “Resilience in an Age of Disruption”, where they presented their work on: “Digital Twins in Flood Resilience: Potential, Challenges and Reliability for Urban Applications”, was delivered within the track Digital Foundations of Resilient Built Environments. It explored the role of digital twins as emerging tools to support disaster preparedness, response, and long-term urban resilience planning.
The work highlighted both the opportunities and limitations of these systems. Key benefits include improved situational awareness, scenario-based planning, operational optimization, and enhanced stakeholder engagement through interactive visualization environments.
At the same time, the presentation emphasized important challenges for real-world implementation, including data integration, computational demands, model uncertainty, governance complexity, and the need to better incorporate human behavior into digital representations of urban systems.
The conference provided a valuable forum to exchange ideas with researchers working on complexity science, infrastructure systems, and urban resilience, reinforcing the project’s commitment to advancing robust, transparent, and socially-aware digital twin frameworks for flood management.