Digital Twin for Emergency Management Research Briefing at DCU Business School

25 September 2026

The Risk & Crisis Management Special Interest Group and the Emergency Management Institute Ireland (EMII) were delighted to host a breakfast and research briefing showcasing cutting-edge digital twin research being undertaken by a cross-faculty team at Dublin City University.

Speakers included the DT4EM project team, Prof Caroline McMullan, Prof Ali Intizar, Dr Jaime Fernandez and Romal Thakkar from DCU; Cevik Kandiller and Robert Howell from Dublin Fire Brigade; and EMII Chairperson, Paul Kellett.

The briefing brought together professionals from across the emergency management, public safety and critical infrastructure sectors to explore how digital twin technology can enhance emergency preparedness, fire safety and operational response.

The event provided an opportunity to explore the DT4EM project, which brings together pre-incident planning, indoor and outdoor mapping, and multi-agency operational data within a single, interactive platform. The project demonstrates how digital twin technology can support the transition from paper-based planning and static 2D mapping towards a dynamic, integrated 3D operational picture for emergency responders.

Highlights

The project team outlined the core features and methodological achievements of the DT4EM platform:

From Paper to Platform: Transforming traditional paper-based pre-incident planning into a standardised digital workflow using unified Building Owner/Occupier and Officer Survey inspection forms.

Multi-Scale 3D Mapping: Combining drone surveys, including 1,699 images captured at approximately 100 metres over the DCU Glasnevin campus, with 360-degree photography and Building Information Models (BIM).

Advanced Indoor Navigation: Implementing Matterport 3D indoor modelling across campus buildings, including more than 100 scans of key facilities such as The Helix. The platform incorporates interactive Points of Interest (POIs), floor plans, live mini-maps and embedded safety assets.

Platform Evolution to Cesium: Moving from initial rapid prototyping using Bentley’s OpenCities Planner to CesiumJS and Cesium ion, enabling the use of open 3D Tiles standards, greater coding flexibility and scalable cloud hosting.

Integrating Data Across Silos: Bringing 11 semantic datasets together within a single platform, including GeoDirectory, Met Éireann real-time weather APIs, CSO 2022 Census data, the Pobal Deprivation Index, water hydrants and emergency routing travel times.

Fire Service and Strategic Planning: Mapping Dublin Fire Brigade fire stations, coverage areas, risk categorisations and response capability windows to support resource deployment and data-informed decision-making.

Collaborative Validation and Recognition: The research has been informed by frontline field visits to Dublin Fire Brigade’s East Regional Control Centre, focus groups with EMII members and close collaboration between the DCU and Dublin Fire Brigade teams.

The session highlighted the value of industry-academic collaboration, bringing together expertise from DCU, Dublin Fire Brigade, Bentley Systems and Dublin City Council.

Having established a robust proof of concept on the DCU Glasnevin campus, the project provides a strong foundation for exploring how digital twin technology could be scaled across Dublin City and beyond. By bringing together detailed spatial information, operational data and emergency planning information within a single visual environment, the platform has the potential to provide responders with rapid, actionable intelligence before they arrive at an incident.

The briefing also provided an opportunity for practitioners to engage directly with the research team and consider how digital twin technology could support future developments in risk management, emergency preparedness, fire safety, critical entity resilience, and emergency response.