Roland van der Heijden

Fromorigin Roland van der Heijden is a city planner working on issues regardingthe development of thephysicalcity. He alsoalways had a fascinationfor digital and data, and has built up a lot of experiencearound GIS, tooling and data. These experiences has led totheideathat we no longer live in a social-physicalreality, as we have doneforages, but more and more living in a social-physical-digital reality. This new reality changes everything, the systems we have built and thechallanges we are facing. But italsoraises new questions like what kind of role does everybodyplay in this new social-physical-digital ecosystem, includingtherole(s) of thegovernment? Thisissues havesince 2018 transformed in the program Digital City Rotterdam, of which Roland is the program manager. The program runs until 2024, afterwhichone of themain goals shouldberealised: therealisation of anoperational Open Urban Platform with Digital Twin.