Urban Intelligence: a Modular, Fully Integrated, and Evolving Model for Cities Digital Twinning

City Digital Twin Potentials: A Review and Research Agenda

“…To solve heterogeneous data, utilization of the ontological approach was suggested to improve the semantic interoperability and secure future data expansions [35][36][37]. Developing multi-layered system architecture for the city's digital models was also proposed to manage and integrate various data types in the digital twin model [34,45]. In addition, although the underground infrastructure data lack appropriate levels of accessibility and quality, it was suggested that they are candidates for better interoperability due to the ability to integrate several data models [44].…”

“…The city digital twin is anticipated to construct a link with the real city or the physical counterpart to enhance the visibility of the city and the understanding and analysis of the city's events and operations. For that purpose, the city digital twin is perceived as enabling technology to promote situational awareness for city management and to provide a city information model; that is, the city digital twin can collect, monitor, and manage city data [34]. For instance, it can reflect citizens' health condition [58]; represent, reason, and analyze energy consumption data [33,55,65]; detect motion for public security activities [42]; monitor noise pollution in the city using dynamics modeling [61]; provide real-time tracking of information during disasters and localize vulnerable objects [50,56]; and track and monitor individuals' behavior and localize disruptions and potential risks for emergency and disaster management [57,64,68].…”

“…The first is the 3D model itself, and for addressing that, Wan et al argued that developing several digital twins for the city may be more feasible than developing one model for the whole city's systems and processes [63]. Castelli et al suggested organizing the city digital twin into layers to integrate the city's various domains and dimensions [34]. In addition, Radenkovic et al pointed out the availability of using "loosely coupled" models to overcome the complexity of the physical counterpart and its multiple domains [61].…”

“…Visualizing the city scale in the digital twin is still lacking the comprehensiveness of the city information [66]. Several digital twin cities were developed that lack model accuracy, completeness, and graphical representation qualities [34,39,40,47]. In addition, utilizing participatory sensing and crowdsourced data to supplement limitations of sensory information revealed some localization errors and untrusted data [38,56,57].…”

A multi-dimensional digital twin use cases classification framework

“…In the second case involving full infrastructure systems, Kourtit and Nijkamp (2018) and Anejionu et al (2019) considered all means of transportation in developing their DTs. Other projects involved multiple distinct infrastructure systems in one DT (Castelli et al, 2019). It is important to highlight though, that the idea of a SoS isn't a utopian dream, but rather a mere mindseta systemic way of thinking that can cross the organizational boundaries and dissolve the infrastructure sectoral silos.…”