Abstract
Digital twins (DTs) technology has recently gained attention within the research community due to its potential to help build sustainable smart cities. However, there is a gap in the literature: currently no unified model for city services has been proposed that can guarantee interoperability across cities, capture each city’s unique characteristics, and act as a base for modeling digital twins. This research aims to fill that gap. In this work, we propose the DT-DNA model in which we design a city services digital twin, with the goal of reflecting the real state of development of a city’s services towards enhancing its citizens’ quality of life (QoL). As it was designed using ISO 37120, one of the leading international standards for city services, the model guarantees interoperability and allows for easy comparison of services within and across cities. In order to test our model, we built DT-DNA sequences of services in both Quebec City and Boston and then used a DNA alignment tool to determine the matching percentage between them. Results show that the DT-DNA sequences of services in both cities are 46.5% identical. Ground truth comparisons show a similar result, which provides a preliminary proof-of-concept for the applicability of the proposed model and framework. These results also imply that one city performs better than the other. Therefore, we propose an algorithm to compare cities based on the proposed DT-DNA and, using Boston and Quebec City as a case study, demonstrate that Boston has better services towards enhancing QoL for its citizens.
Highlights
Digital twins (DTs) technology has come a long way in industry since it was first developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to mirror the state of health of the flying twin [1] and coined as a core concept for the industrial future by Vickers and Grieves in 2002 [2]
The results show that BO is better than Quebec City (QC) using services data collected from World Council on City Data (WCCD) and the proposed algorithm, since RV = −11 when we compare QC vs. BO
We suggested leveraging digital twins technology for city services, due to its potential to enhance quality of life in smart cities
Summary
Digital twins (DTs) technology has come a long way in industry since it was first developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to mirror the state of health of the flying twin [1] and coined as a core concept for the industrial future by Vickers and Grieves in 2002 [2]. The incorporation of living and non-living physical entities into the definition of digital twins [7] introduced the seemingly unlimited benefits of using the technology to monitor, understand, and optimize the functions of city services aimed at improving the quality of life and well-being of citizens. This expanded vision is of particular interest given that the percentage of the world population living in cities is expected to rise to 68% by 2050 [8], which emphasizes the importance of efficient management of city services [9]. Reviewing literature shows that the DT concept is already in use in several applications areas but many challenges have to be addressed and interoperability is one of them [12]
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