By Dorothea Manou, Market Development, Cities at Bentley Systems and Debu Chakraborty, Senior Regional Director, EMEA at Bentley Systems.
As the UAE advances its AI‑driven 2031 Strategic Planning Cycle under the ‘We the UAE 2031’ vision, the nation is fundamentally redefining the planning, construction, and governance of its digital cities. This transformation is driven by the systematic integration of digital‑city platforms, advanced urban‑modelling capabilities, and AI‑enabled analytics, which have become indispensable to data‑driven master planning, sustainability objectives, and smart governance frameworks.
In 2026, these technologies are anticipated to redirect urban development away from reactive decision-making towards proactively addressing uncertainty in planning and design. This progression will empower authorities to forecast future conditions, optimise infrastructure investments, and embed sustainability goals into the core of city operations.
While traditional master planning has long relied on static datasets and fragmented workflows, next‑generation urban digital twin platforms integrate BIM, GIS, IoT, reality modeling, enterprise external data, and systems. This gives urban professionals real-time visibility and actionable insights, allowing cities to simulate development scenarios, optimize land use, and forecast infrastructure demands, while anticipating growth, climate impacts, and operational risks. .
According to Dorothea Manou, Market Development, Cities at Bentley Systems, the UAE’s national vision focuses on accelerating this shift towards AI-powered urban intelligence. “Under the UAE 2031 vision, the UAE sets the stage on how they will lean towards AI-powered planning that will transform how cities in their region grow. Focusing on digital city-wide platforms that will integrate real-time data, IoT, mobility systems, etc., to enable professionals and planners to analyse, simulate and optimise land use before execution,” Manou added.
Embedding Sustainability into Design
Urban modelling tools powered by predictive analytics also enable planners to evaluate future scenarios well before development begins. This includes analysing population growth, mobility flows, energy demand, and climate‑resilience factors – capabilities that are becoming essential in the UAE as it balances rapid urban expansion while advancing its ambitious sustainability objectives.
Sustainability is no longer a secondary consideration and is becoming embedded algorithmically into planning decisions. Digital twins and urban‑simulation platforms assess renewable‑energy potential, carbon performance, and climate‑resilience indicators at a city‑wide level, guiding more informed infrastructure decisions and long‑term environmental outcomes. Manou notes that these tools are especially important as the UAE continues to develop new urban centres.
“As the UAE’s ambition extends to building new cities from scratch, backed by multi-billion-dollar investment programs and dedicated budgets, these next-generation urban centres will be designed as fully digital, sustainable ecosystems from day one, accelerating sustainability goals and attracting global investors. In 2026, we should expect UAE municipalities and cities to position the country as a global leader in AI-enabled smart governance and urban innovation,” Manou stated.
Smart Governance and Digital Twins
Beyond planning and sustainability, smart governance is becoming a central outcome of digital‑city platforms. With constant updates through live data, urban digital twins are enabling governments to embed transparency, accountability, and performance‑based decision‑making into their core operations.
Debu Chakraborty, Senior Regional Director, EMEA at Bentley Systems, explains how these platforms are operationalizing governance at scale. “Under the UAE’s AI-driven 2031 Strategic Planning Cycle, city-scale digital platforms will, by 2026, institutionalize data-centric governance and sustainability outcomes. Bentley’s iTwin Platform and Bentley Infrastructure Cloud enable evergreen urban digital twins that federate BIM, GIS, reality meshes, IoT and carbon data – providing a unified evidence base for master planning, impact assessments, and scenario testing.”
“In practice, these platforms strengthen interagency transparency, accelerate permitting and capital planning, and embed performance targets (e.g., energy, emissions, service reliability) into continuous, auditable workflows – advancing ‘smart governance’ while meeting local data residency requirements,” Chakraborty adds.
The UAE’s Path Forward
Going forward, scalable, interoperable, urban digital twin platforms are expected to evolve from simple planning tools into core national infrastructure for governance and policy delivery, enabling evidence‑based decision-making across transport, energy, water, and public service domains. The ‘We the UAE 2031’ vision, which brings together AI, digital twins, and urban modelling, is putting the nation at the forefront of AI-enabled urban innovation and establishing a global standard for how future cities can be planned, governed, and sustained.
