In popular conceptions of Smart Cities, a digital twin is often represented as a hyper-realistic 3D replica of the city: detailed buildings, sophisticated visual layers, and an almost cinematic aesthetic. But for a public administration, the value does not lie there; it lies in the ability to simulate, predict, and make better decisions about services that directly affect people’s lives.

The challenge is strategic: how can you move from theory to an operational tool without committing million-dollar budgets or relying on closed solutions? TwIN in Navarra’s answer was to start small, but with every effort focused on scalability.

In this article, we explore some of the distinguishing features of the model this project followed to pilot digital twins in Pamplona with real deployment potential.
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From Pilots to Infrastructure: Changing the Logic of Investment

From the outset, TwIN in Navarra was conceived as a collaborative project. It was promoted by the Government of Navarra and the Pamplona City Council, and its implementation involved the participation of Tracasa Instrumental as well as the collaboration of key actors in the Navarrese ecosystem.

Within this framework, an innovation model was promoted that seeks to break with a common dynamic in public administration: large tenders or small-scale pilots with high upfront risk and limited room for learning. To that end, TwIN GovTech was launched as an open innovation programme to pilot digital twin solutions that address Pamplona’s challenges.

However, one distinctive feature stands out from the beginning: the pilots were not designed as isolated experiments, but as one part of a broader strategy. From day one, the goal was for the tools developed through TwIN GovTech to be able to integrate into and operate within the large-scale digital twin that Navarra is developing. In practical terms, this meant validating functionalities with clear scaling potential in Pamplona’s specific context.

In this way, instead of building a single system from the start, a relatively small but sufficient investment was made to test digital twins in a real environment, with €60,000 allocated to each pilot, always with future scaling in mind.

In this model, each pilot acts as a real-world laboratory:

• testing a specific capability of this technology in a particular area,
• generating useful data from the outset,
• and feeding the development of the city’s larger digital twin.

As a result, while the central system is still being built, it is already being informed and validated through real-world experience.

Eight Specific Challenges, One Shared Vision

The programme was structured around key strategic areas, namely energy, mobility, urban planning, and air quality, defined and developed by the Pamplona City Council. From there, eight strategic challenges were designed, four of them through co-design sessions with the Navarrese ecosystem. This ensured that the eight selected challenges were not disconnected experiments, but rather responses to real needs.

To address these challenges, the competition was opened to a diverse ecosystem, through an open call aimed at universities, technology centres, and highly specialised technology companies alike.

The process also stood out for innovating in the way innovation itself was procured. The eight winning solutions were tested through €60,000 pilots using different contracting channels, including design contests, clauses encouraging collaboration between companies, and simplified procedures. This approach helped avoid the usual barriers associated with public procurement.

The final result is the testing of digital twins with different functionalities, all of them with a direct impact on public services in Pamplona. For example, one measures air quality to anticipate pollution peaks; another automates the analysis of urban space using sensors deployed on the ground, making it possible to identify where interventions are needed; and a third generates accurate thermal data to identify areas with potential for heating and cooling networks.

These solutions also strengthen the structural capabilities of a larger-scale digital twin:

• simulating predictive scenarios (“what-if” analysis), by evaluating the impact of public policies and urban projects in a virtual environment before applying them in the real world;
• analysing complex dynamics, by combining large volumes of data from different areas to identify patterns and understand cause-and-effect relationships;
• planning and making strategic decisions, by designing infrastructure and networks based on historical and real-time data, reducing uncertainty;
• optimising resources and services, by continuously improving the city’s operational efficiency and assessing the availability and allocation of resources through data and simulation;
• improving crisis response, by enabling faster and more accurate action in the face of emergencies or unforeseen incidents.

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Developing With Adoption in Mind

Another distinctive feature of the model is that, rather than treating solutions as closed tools, they were built in constant dialogue with municipal technicians. This is fundamental, because it increases the likelihood that the solutions will not only work, but also fit into day-to-day operations.

It is, ultimately, a matter of practicality. A dashboard, however sophisticated, is only valuable if it addresses a real need, and only useful if it supports a decision that is already part of everyday practice. This approach reduces one of the greatest risks in public innovation: technology being underused or simply abandoned.

Less Visualisation, More Data Architecture

One of the project’s most important lessons is that the real value lies in what is invisible at first glance. This has been possible thanks to the way the pilots were designed. Interfaces were not the focus; instead, the emphasis was on solving what usually remains hidden: data quality, integration, and governance.

With this approach, the pilots have made it possible to:

• detect faults in existing sensors,
• establish cleaning and validation standards,
• and connect systems that had previously operated in silos.

Without these pillars, any digital twin is merely a representation. With them, it becomes a decision-making tool with far greater potential for integration.

Scaling Without Starting Over: A Modular Logic

In this sense, the true impact of this approach goes beyond what has already been validated; it lies in what it makes possible to build in the future.

On the one hand, the pilots were designed with a growth logic:

• territorial scaling, from neighbourhoods to cities, and from city level to regional level;
• functional scaling, through the gradual incorporation of new layers;
• interoperability from the outset, avoiding dependency on closed technologies.

This turns the initial investment into more than experimentation: it turns it into strategic infrastructure.

The result of this methodology is a model that energises the local technology ecosystem, sets precedents in innovative public procurement, minimises the risk of public investment, and ensures that future scaling is always based on informed decisions.

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_‍^{The TwIN GovTech programme, in whose implementation Gobe has participated, is one of the workstreams of the TwIN in Navarra project, promoted by the Government of Navarra and the Pamplona City Council and led by the public company Tracasa Instrumental. It forms part of TWin, the RETECH initiative “Acceleration of entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems based on Digital Twins”, funded through Next Generation EU funds.}

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