MHDT

The Mental Health Digital Twin (MHDT) is an innovative service that creates a dynamic virtual model to assess and predict the impact of natural environments, specifically urban parks, on human mental well-being.

Functioning as a "digital twin"—a virtual representation of a real-world system, in this case, a person's interaction with a park—the MHDT serves a wide range of stakeholders, including citizens, urban planners, and local authorities. Its primary purpose is to inform these groups about how planned renovations and specific environmental characteristics of a park influence visitors' mental health.

The system achieves this by capturing and analyzing large-scale data through a combination of qualitative and quantitative tools. This includes:

• Physiological Data: Measuring brain (EEG) and heart signals from participants during park visits.

• Subjective Feedback: Collecting well-being self-reports and mental maps of their experience.

• Environmental Analysis: Evaluating the park from 56 distinct viewpoints and scoring each using a Contemplative Landscape Model (CLM) based on seven key environmental attributes.

Integrated into the GreenInCities Yggio platform, the MHDT leverages IoT sensors and various IT systems. Using machine learning, it maps physiological responses to environmental data, identifying clusters of individuals who respond positively or negatively to a park visit. The model pinpoints which specific landscape dimensions contribute most to these mental health outcomes.

The final output provides clear, actionable insights, such as mental well-being impact scores and visualizations, enabling data-driven decision-making for designing public spaces that actively promote and enhance mental health.