Urban Digital Twin Challenges: A Systematic Review and Perspectives for Sustainable Smart Cities

Weil, Charlotte; Bibri, Simon Elias; Longchamp, Régis; Golay, François; Alahi, Alexandre

doi:10.1016/j.scs.2023.104862

Cited by 84 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 106 publications

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“…From a technical point of view, although all three cases point, in the long run, to a cyber-physical holistic development of CDTs, currently these projects remain anchored to city information models synthetizing GIS and BIM with some IoT-derived data. Hence, integration and interoperability remain major issues to be tackled, as evidenced also by recent literature (Lei et al, 2023;Weil et al, 2023). In fact, in Dublin and Helsinki it remains to see if/how the coordination across various projects, as a result of their decision to develop multiple CDTs, will be tackled.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

No longer hype, not yet mainstream? Recalibrating city digital twins' expectations and reality: a case study perspective

Calzati

2023

Front. Big Data

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While the concept of digital twin has already consolidated in industry, its spinoff in the urban environment—in the form of a City Digital Twin (CDT)—is more recent. A CDT is a dynamic digital model of the physical city whereby the physical and the digital are integrated in both directions, thus mutually affecting each other in real time. Replicating the path of smart cities, literature remarks that agendas and discourses around CDTs remain (1) tech-centered, that is, focused on overcoming technical limitations and lacking a proper sociotechnical contextualization of digital twin technologies; (2) practice-first, entailing hands-on applications without a long-term strategic governance for the management of these same technologies. Building on that, the goal of this article is to move beyond high-level conceptualizations of CDT to (a) get a cognizant understanding of what a CDT can do, how, and for whom; (b) map the current state of development and implementation of CDTs in Europe. This will be done by looking at three case studies—Dublin, Helsinki, and Rotterdam—often considered as successful examples of CDTs in Europe. Through exiting literature and official documents, as well as by relying on primary interviews with tech experts and local officials, the article explores the maturity of these CDTs, along the Gartner's hype-mainstream curve of technological innovations. Findings show that, while all three municipalities have long-term plans to deliver an integrated, cyber-physical real-time modeling of the city, currently their CDTs are still at an early stage of development. The focus remains on technical barriers—e.g., integration of different data sources—overlooking the societal dimension, such as the systematic involvement of citizens. As for the governance, all cases embrace a multistakeholder approach; yet CDTs are still not used for policymaking and it remains to see how the power across stakeholders will be distributed in terms of access to, control of, and decisions about CDTs.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

No longer hype, not yet mainstream? Recalibrating city digital twins' expectations and reality: a case study perspective

Calzati

2023

Front. Big Data

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“…Im Bauingenieurwesen und der Architektur wird der Begriff "Digitaler Zwilling" derzeit als ein Werkzeug zur Unterstützung der Digitalisierung verwendet. In der Stadtplanung existieren dazu bereits Plattformen, welche die sogenannten Smart Citys unter Verwendung der hinterlegten Informationen als urbanen Digitalen Zwilling abbilden können [11][12][13]. Doch auch für die Verkehrsinfrastruktur werden diese Ansätze verfolgt.…”

Section: Anwendung Digitaler Zwillingeunclassified

Digitale Zwillinge für Brücken mittlerer Stützweite – Pilotprojekt Brücke Schwindegg – Teil 2: Verwaltungsschale

Wimmer,

Braml,

Kaiser

2024

Beton und Stahlbetonbau

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Der Begriff „Digitaler Zwilling“ findet im deutschsprachigen Raum zunehmend Verwendung für die digitale Verwaltung und Überwachung des Zustands von Brücken. Während in der Industrie und Medizin bereits normative Entwicklungen für den Einsatz Digitaler Zwillinge angestoßen wurden, werden im Bauwesen derzeit erste Prototypen umgesetzt. Für den Betrieb digitaler Abbilder wurden proprietäre Onlineumgebungen entwickelt, die in ihrer Flexibilität und Wiederverwendbarkeit beschränkt sind. Eine Skalierung mittels Einbindung in Modelle des Building Information Modellings wird untersucht, stößt jedoch aufgrund der Echtzeitanbindung an ihre Grenzen. Im Beitrag werden bestehende Definitionen des Digitalen Zwillings der Industrie in den Kontext des Bauwesens gesetzt. Anhand der in Teil 1 des Beitrags vorgestellten Isenbrücke in Schwindegg wird die Implementierung dieser Brücke als Industrie 4.0‐Verwaltungsschale präsentiert. Es zeigt sich, dass auch für Ingenieurbauwerke ein industrieller datengetriebener Digitaler Zwilling technisch und semantisch umgesetzt werden kann. Im Beitrag werden außerdem zukünftige Herausforderungen für die Entwicklung von Auswertungs‐ und Steuermechanismen für das Bauwerk vorgestellt und eine Möglichkeit der Visualisierung gezeigt. Das Ziel ist die Schaffung einer Syntax für die Kommunikation zwischen den Verwaltungsschalen.

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“…The first pane of Figure 3 contains names of formal methods and the second one lists the goals of their applications in modeling and describing the indicators. These include traditional machine learning techniques such as factor analysis, principal component analysis, and cluster analysis, and advanced ones such as deep learning networks, as well as powerful AI techniques such as machine reasoning [67], synthetic data generation [68,69], and digital twins [70,71]. Data analytics, including data aggregation, visualization, and correlation analysis, are being extended by contemporary causality analysis and predictive tools.…”

Section: Formal Notions and Framework Of Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Next Generation Computing and Communication Hub for First Responders in Smart Cities

Shaposhnyk,

Lai,

Wolbring

et al. 2024

Sensors

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This paper contributes to the development of a Next Generation First Responder (NGFR) communication platform with the key goal of embedding it into a smart city technology infrastructure. The framework of this approach is a concept known as SmartHub, developed by the US Department of Homeland Security. The proposed embedding methodology complies with the standard categories and indicators of smart city performance. This paper offers two practice-centered extensions of the NGFR hub, which are also the main results: first, a cognitive workload monitoring of first responders as a basis for their performance assessment, monitoring, and improvement; and second, a highly sensitive problem of human society, the emergency assistance tools for individuals with disabilities. Both extensions explore various technological-societal dimensions of smart cities, including interoperability, standardization, and accessibility to assistive technologies for people with disabilities. Regarding cognitive workload monitoring, the core result is a novel AI formalism, an ensemble of machine learning processes aggregated using machine reasoning. This ensemble enables predictive situation assessment and self-aware computing, which is the basis of the digital twin concept. We experimentally demonstrate a specific component of a digital twin of an NGFR, a near-real-time monitoring of the NGFR cognitive workload. Regarding our second result, a problem of emergency assistance for individuals with disabilities that originated as accessibility to assistive technologies to promote disability inclusion, we provide the NGFR specification focusing on interactions based on AI formalism and using a unified hub platform. This paper also discusses a technology roadmap using the notion of the Emergency Management Cycle (EMC), a commonly accepted doctrine for managing disasters through the steps of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. It positions the NGFR hub as a benchmark of the smart city emergency service.

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Urban Digital Twin Challenges: A Systematic Review and Perspectives for Sustainable Smart Cities

Cited by 84 publications

References 106 publications

No longer hype, not yet mainstream? Recalibrating city digital twins' expectations and reality: a case study perspective

No longer hype, not yet mainstream? Recalibrating city digital twins' expectations and reality: a case study perspective

Digitale Zwillinge für Brücken mittlerer Stützweite – Pilotprojekt Brücke Schwindegg – Teil 2: Verwaltungsschale

Next Generation Computing and Communication Hub for First Responders in Smart Cities

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