PUREPOLIS, when the digital twin becomes a lever against urban pollution
What if cities could anticipate and reduce pollution before it harms health, quality of life, or the climate? This is exactly the ambition of PUREPOLIS, a European Horizon project that brings together scientists, local authorities, consulting firms, and digital experts around a common goal: to equip territories to better measure, understand, and reduce urban pollution.
🔎 Why PUREPOLIS?
Cities concentrate several forms of pollution – air, noise, soil, water, heat – whose health, social, and climate impacts accumulate. However, current tools are fragmented: air sensors here, noise or health there, isolated scenarios, and data that is not easily usable.
PUREPOLIS changes the game with an integrated approach in three steps:
Collect and merge multi-source data (sensors, open data, participatory sciences, satellite data…).
Produce dynamic and predictive analyses (source attribution in almost real-time, health impact models, vulnerability mapping).
Provide decision-makers with concrete tools to act, notably a Digital Twin to simulate, visualize, and evaluate pollution reduction actions.
Two pilot cities co-construct the project: Nantes and Valencia (Spain), with the aim of later expanding to other European metropolises.
🎯 Key project objectives
PUREPOLIS aims to:
✅ Reduce exposure to multiple pollutions (air, noise, soil, water)
✅ Prioritize effective actions for health and climate
✅ Produce local and reusable data for public action
✅ Understand behaviors and acceptance levers
✅ Co-develop dynamic reduction strategies
✅ Equip cities with a decision-making digital twin
The role of K-LC through UrbanThink: designing the digital twin of PUREPOLIS
Kintsugi-LowCarbon acts as the central technical partner in the creation of the Digital Twin of the project, an urban digital twin that will serve:
to visualize pollution on the territory,
to simulate action scenarios (traffic, urban planning, regulations, greening…),
and to assess co-benefits (health, climate, quality of life).
Our missions within PUREPOLIS:
Co-design of the digital twin with stakeholders
Production of the first operational version
Integration of data, models, and scenarios provided by scientific partners
Preparation for operation and commercial duplication
What data will be integrated into the digital twin?
UrbanThink will receive and integrate, among other things:
Pollution data from official sensors, participatory science, and local networks
Near-real-time source attribution results (traffic, residential, industry…)
Multi-pollutant health impact models
Maps of social and territorial vulnerability
Behavioral data (acceptability, action levers)
Predictive climate/pollution models from partners
Cost/benefit evaluation results of measures
This data will feed a unique interactive space allowing:
✔ to understand the existing situation,
✔ to test anti-pollution measures,
✔ to enlighten political decision-making.
And after?
The PUREPOLIS digital twin will be designed to be replicable and scalable in other European territories. UrbanThink will work on its industrializable version, with a subscription access model or through support services.
PUREPOLIS is the opportunity to transform environmental data into concrete decisions for healthier, more resilient, and better-equipped cities.
