Chapter 14 - Digital twins of cities and evasive futures

Abstract

New forms of urban governance are emerging with the onset of digital twins and a changing relationship between digital cities and designers. (Digital twins were developed by NASA for technology roadmaps and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for computational simulation of material complexity and failures of systems on aerospace vehicles. Digital twins refer to digital replicas of existing and proposed assets to improve management, virtualize testing and maintenance, and maximize efficiency gains. The term was coined by Michael Grieves in 2001. (Michael Grieves and John Vickers, “Digital Twin: Mitigating Unpredictable, Undesirable Emergent Behavior in Complex Systems.” In Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Complex Systems: New Findings and Approaches, eds, Kahlen, F.-J., S. Flumerfelt, and A. Alves. Cham (Switzerland: Springer International Publishing 2017), 87.) As networks of emerging digital twins are drawn together in a national model for the United Kingdom, it is worth exploring the implications of each digital twin and its sensor systems and ICT framework in relation to physical places. (This mode resulted from the UK government’s Industrial Strategy, Infrastructure and Projects Authority, National Infrastructure Commission's Data for the Public Good (2017), and the Digital Framework Task Group (DFTG). The Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) is developing the digital twin information management group along with ICE.) City digital twins are an evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart city concepts, where advanced information modeling and networking are leveraged to facilitate complex urban management. The fundamental driver is to unlock built environment data for improved decision-making, operation, and testing of scenarios.