About — Cambridge Digital Twin

Mission

A systems-level tool for the stakeholders of Greater Cambridge's growth — one that doesn't otherwise exist. Dozens of strategies, statutory plans and planning applications each promise homes, jobs, carbon cuts, water and nature outcomes — in isolation, on their own timelines, against their own baselines. No single organisation aggregates those promises, tests whether they cohere, or reports whether they are being kept. This site is that layer.

It does three things:

Ground truth. Every quantified claim, target and constraint is recorded from primary sources only — planning applications, statutory plans, council pages and applicant documents, never media reports. Entries carry a ✓ sourced badge when read directly from the source document; conflicting figures get an explicit discrepancy flag; and where no figure has been published at all, the gap is shown honestly rather than papered over.
The systems view. The plans intersect: housing targets depend on water infrastructure, new settlements on railway stations, skills pipelines on funding decisions, and every growth promise on environmental limits. The map, timeline, flows and doughnut views each expose a different slice of how the pieces depend on — and collide with — each other, across organisational boundaries no single stakeholder's documents cross.
Progress. Strategies and targets are static documents; delivery is not. Annual monitoring exists but is fragmented across authority monitoring reports, water-resources progress reports and corporate accounts. This site tracks what actually happens — registered applications, slipped dates, published actuals — against what was promised.

Why systems-level matters

Seen stakeholder by stakeholder, each plan looks rational. Seen together, the dependencies become the story: public investment in water infrastructure is a precondition for the return on housing development and jobs growth; the railway station is the precondition for the new town; the skills programme is the precondition for the promised workforce. The business case for the enabling investments only closes across stakeholders — a meta business case no single actor can show from their own documents. The same structure reveals the social and environmental outcomes that must be achieved and balanced for growth to be genuinely sustainable, which the Doughnut view makes explicit.

Scope

Greater Cambridge (Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire), together with the wider systems it depends on: the regional water network planned by Water Resources East, the Oxford–Cambridge corridor programmes, East West Rail, and the national funding and governance decisions that shape all of them.

The five views

Map	Where everything lands — developments, infrastructure, water & environment, energy — with sourced detail on every pin.
Claims	Every quantified promise, target and constraint, tested for overlap, discrepancy and deliverability.
Timeline	Two views of time: the decision calendar (events, gates and pinch points) and cumulative delivery stacking against dated targets.
Frameworks	The same evidence through established models — the Doughnut and Rewiring the Economy — each credited within the view.
Strategies	The full policy register, grouped by legal force — what is statutory obligation and what is voluntary ambition.

Sourcing rules

Primary sources only: planning documents, statutory plans, council and government publications, and applicant material (clearly labelled as such). Media and commentary are never used as sources.
An entry is marked ✓ sourced only when the source document has been read directly.
Where sources disagree, the discrepancy is flagged and both figures shown — including where an applicant's public claims differ from their own planning submission.
Where no figure exists in any primary source, the entry says so explicitly. Gaps are findings.
Site boundaries and corridors marked indicative are strategic placements, not measured geometry.

Contributing

Corrections and additions are welcome via the Suggest + button — a missing strategy, development, figure or a published number for any gap shown on the site. Every suggestion needs a link to a primary source; that rule is what keeps the tool trustworthy.

Independent project; not affiliated with any council, developer or campaign. It takes no editorial position beyond what the source documents state. Data current as of July 2026 and updated as applications register, dates slip and monitoring reports publish.