Digital twins in Portugal: what they are, what they are for and what they cost

«Digital twin» has gone from trade-fair buzzword to funding line: in 2025, a Portuguese recovery-plan (PRR) call for digital twins of territories received 56 applications and approved 8, worth more than €10 million in total. Lisbon, Porto and Guimarães are already building theirs. But the term is used for everything from a good-looking 3D model to a dashboard of sensors, which makes it hard to know what you are buying. This article explains what a digital twin is, which real examples already exist in Portugal, what it is for in a company or a municipality, and what it costs.

What a digital twin is, and what it isn't

The most quoted definition comes from the Centre for Digital Built Britain's Gemini Principles: a realistic digital representation of something physical. It adds the sentence that matters: what distinguishes a digital twin from any other digital model is its connection to the physical twin. For cities, the European Commission describes a virtual representation of a city's physical assets, fed by data and updated as those assets change (EU LDT Toolbox). There is also a standard, ISO/IEC 30173:2023, dedicated to digital twin concepts and terminology.

In practice it helps to separate four things that usually get mixed up:

• BIM model: the digital representation of a building or infrastructure used to design, build and operate it. It is the rich drawing, but it shows what was planned, not necessarily what exists.
• 3D survey: a point cloud or mesh captured from reality, with laser, photogrammetry or Matterport. It is what exists, on a given day.
• Virtual tour: a way to see and walk through a real place. Great for showing, limited for working.
• Digital twin: any of the above becomes a twin when it is connected to the real place and kept up to date, by periodic recapture or live data, and used to make decisions.

The line between a model and a twin is not the quality of the 3D. It is the connection to reality. A beautiful model that goes out of date is just a model.

Digital twins that already exist in Portugal

Cities

The City4Climate project is building digital twins for climate action in Lisbon, Porto and Guimarães, extended to Aveiro, Oeiras and Vila Nova de Famalicão. It is led by NOVA IMS with Ubiwhere, Porto Digital, CCG/ZGDV and the city councils, has a budget of about €1.5 million, and is funded by the PRR through its «Smart Territories» investment. In Lisbon, the European NexTCity project is developing a digital twin of the city's Low Emission Zone, from 2024 to 2027. And Guimarães has published its own guide to the path from city information models to digital twins.

Behind this is the «Digital Twins for Smart Territories» call from FCT and AMA, worth up to €1.5 million per project: of 56 applications, 8 were approved, for €10.4 million in total.

Heritage

One of the most recent examples is the Escoural Cave in Montemor-o-Novo, presented in October 2026 by a project from NOVA FCSH, the University of Évora and Montemor-o-Novo's town council, also backed by the PRR. It combines a 3D survey, a virtual reality app that opens galleries closed to the public, and environmental data from the cave. It is a good picture of how a 3D survey becomes part of a twin: the capture is the base, and the data tied to the real place is what turns it into one.

Energy and infrastructure

INESC TEC and the University of Porto created a digital twin of a power transformer in 2020, and INESC TEC is part of the European TwinEU project on the Iberian power grid. At the Port of Leixões, the port authority APDL has presented its use of digital twins and real-time monitoring. And, according to trade press, Infraestruturas de Portugal launched a tender in 2026 for a digital twin of its mobility networks.

What it is for in a company or a municipality

• Building and facilities management: a single, current source of truth about a building's condition, to inspect remotely, plan space and locate equipment.
• Construction: comparing the design with what was built and keeping a record of every phase, as we explain in virtual tours on construction sites.
• Heritage: a measurable record of a monument as it stands today, and a way to open it to people who can't go there. We describe how we work in 3D scanning of heritage buildings, with cases such as Castelo de Castro Marim and the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II.
• Training and safety: onboarding teams and rehearsing evacuations in an exact replica of the real place, as in virtual tours beyond marketing.
• Territory and city: simulating the effect of a decision before taking it, as the PRR projects do with climate and mobility.

What a digital twin costs

It depends on four things: the size and complexity of the place, the accuracy you need, how much data you connect, and whether it is kept up to date. For a spatial twin, the kind we build, the ranges in our digital twin guide still hold:

• A captured, measurable web twin of a space: low thousands of euros for a small site, scaling with square metres and recaptures.
• A twin with tagged equipment, documents and measurements: from several thousand to a few tens of thousands of euros, depending on integration.
• An operational twin connected to live sensors: a custom project, where the price comes from the data plumbing, not the 3D.

For comparison, city-scale public projects are another order of magnitude: up to €1.5 million per project in the FCT and AMA call, and about €1.27 million for NexTCity.

Where to start

The honest conclusion: most people who ask for a digital twin first need an accurate, maintained 3D capture, and only later, if a real decision depends on it, the live data layer. Start with one place and one concrete question: what you need to know, how often, and who will use the answer. That decides the accuracy, the recapture rhythm and whether sensors are worth connecting.

If you are thinking about a digital twin for a building, a construction site or a monument, see our 3D capture and virtual reality service or talk to us.

FAQ

Is a digital twin the same as a BIM model?

No. BIM is the digital representation used to design, build and operate a building. It becomes part of a digital twin when it is connected to the real building and kept up to date with what actually exists.

Is a digital twin the same as a virtual tour?

No. A virtual tour is for looking; a digital twin is for working, because it is measurable, maintained and can receive data from the real place. Every twin can be toured, but not every tour is a twin.

Is there funding for digital twins in Portugal?

There has been. The PRR's «Digital Twins for Smart Territories» call funded 8 projects in 2025, and the European Union runs programmes for local digital twins, such as the LDT Toolbox. For new support, keep an eye on calls from FCT, AMA and the Digital Europe programme.