Urban Living Labs (ULLs) are increasingly used as an approach to facilitate sustainable solutions for urban challenges. Urban Digital Twins (UDTs) are regarded as technological enablers to assist in policy and data-driven decision making, capable of providing answers to urban challenges. In this paper we present a case study on an ULL project that resulted in the development of an UDT application in the Belgian city of Bruges. With this study, we looked for answers to two research questions: 1. How can an ULL approach be used to scope and develop an UDT application? 2. What is the actual impact of a fully functional UDT application for the city officials involved in the ULL process? The novelty of our research lies in the combination of ULLs and UDTs with the inclusion of a post hoc impact assessment. Main findings are that working with an ULL approach to scope and develop the Digital Twin use case yielded positive results in terms of desirability and feasibility of the project. However, in terms of viability of a complete Digital Twin solution for a single city, some issues were identified. The most added value was generated in terms of unintended learning regarding the followed ULL processes and innovation management approach which resulted in the adoption of new ways of collaboration and uncovered innovation opportunities for the city officials.

Since the early 2000s, Living Labs have evolved as a predominantly European innovation approach focusing on information and communication technology (ICT) innovation to a worldwide phenomenon spanning multiple topics and sectors, with various innovation goals. However, there remain questions regarding their impact and effectiveness at tackling so-called ‘wicked problems’. As recent research has suggested, Living Labs have the potential of fostering and orchestrating stakeholders and activities in local innovation ecosystems; this paper investigates how this works in practice and what the outcomes and impact of a Living Lab approach are in the case of a newly emerging innovation ecosystem. This is performed via an in-depth case study of the Internet of Water project in Flanders and the subsequent outcomes and impacts on the water ecosystem in the region. The study shows that adopting a Living Lab approach functioned as the starting point and catalyst for an innovation ecosystem as opposed to the mostly scattered and siloed stakeholder landscape before the project. Although far from all ambitions were met during the project, the real-life experimentation and intense co-creation of the Living Lab approach fostered the discovery of shared goals and ambitions. This led to an intensified collaboration, not only among the consortium partners, but throughout the whole ecosystem, resulting in multiple follow-up collaborations and initiatives in an emerging innovation ecosystem on water management.