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Urban Digital Twins discussion
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18 Replies
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Welcome to the start of today’s Digital Twin Talk on Urban Digital Twins and a big thank you to @Tanguy from imec for joining us. We’re looking forward to your thoughts and questions related to Tanguy’s video – and maybe posing one or two of our own.
Please do start adding your thoughts by replying to the conversation thread.
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To get the ball rolling…a first question from me please to @Tanguy
In your view, what is an Urban Digital Twin?
Thanks, Nick
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The draft definitions of an urban Digital Twin by the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) Smart Cities Systems Committee is :
digital representations of a city made up of large quantities of geo-located and other data, often including real time data, which enable better city planning and management.
Note 1: The geo-located data is provided using an integration of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
Note 2: The real-time data is obtained through extensive use of IoT sensors within the city.
Note 3: Developing and using a digital twin of a city involves handling large amounts of data from many sources, which is generally brought together using cloud computing.
Note 4: Artificial intelligence is often used to generate and evaluate different scenarios based on the City Digital Twin to help manage the city better.
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I’d very much value comments and suggestions of how to improve this.
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Hi Tanguy,
Thank you for the video, very interesting. You mentioned the need to manage the latency between the changes to the physical asset and its representation digitally. What I wanted to ask if there are two distinct latencies:- The time from an intervention to when it is reflected physically (e.g. a planned intervention such as a road closure);
- Time time from when the sensor data is collected to when it is reflected digitally (e.g. to import, configure, review, and publish)
Please see image below (trying) to explain what I mean
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3 minutes ago, Tanguy Coenen said:
Hi Michael,
Thank you for your insights!
As I mention in the video, we try to keep up-to-date with current international efforts on smart cities, so we would be very interested to engage in conversation on the topics you mention.
If there are any references to texts you could send over that provide more info, that would be great too.
Hi @Michael Mulquin
Many thanks for your comments. We see a lot of interest from local authorities and cities in digital twins and it would be great to explore the links between smart cities and digital twins.
@Tanguy it would also be great if you have any thoughts on the difference or similarities between the two please.
Many thanks
Nick
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In the IEC we are collecting and analysing use cases for City Information Modeling/urban digital twins in order to define the standards that are needed. As a Systems Committee within the IEC, our role is not mainly to develop standards, but to take a systems approach to understand all the different kinds of things needed for a new technology to be successful – data standards, IoT standards, communications standards, management standards, etc. etc. and then provide the information to the relevant Technical Committees in the appropriate Standards Development Organisations to help them develop the family of standards needed. We formally started work on this project in January, but things have been put on hold for a while, due to Covid 19. We hope to restart things soon.
We very much welcome experts to join us in this, so please get in touch, if you would like to find out more.
IEC_TS_63273_ED1_City_Information_Modeling_Use_Case_Collection_20191211.pdf
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3 minutes ago, DRossiter87 said:
Hi Tanguy,
Thank you for the video, very interesting. You mentioned the need to manage the latency between the changes to the physical asset and its representation digitally. What I wanted to ask if there are two distinct latencies:- The time from an intervention to when it is reflected physically (e.g. a planned intervention such as a road closure);
- Time time from when the sensor data is collected to when it is reflected digitally (e.g. to import, configure, review, and publish)
Please see image below (trying) to explain what I mean
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Thanks for sharing – this was a really interesting video. It was good to see the importance of open standards and interoperability being stressed, this is going to be key to ensuring that investment in twins today doesn’t become obsolete as technology moves on.
I’m keen to know what stage you are at with these projects – do you have any larger multi-domain twins in use today, or are most still in the proof of concept stage?
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6 minutes ago, Michael Mulquin said:
In the IEC we are collecting and analysing use cases for City Information Modeling/urban digital twins in order to define the standards that are needed. As a Systems Committee within the IEC, our role is not mainly to develop standards, but to take a systems approach to understand all the different kinds of things needed for a new technology to be successful – data standards, IoT standards, communications standards, management standards, etc. etc. and then provide the information to the relevant Technical Committees in the appropriate Standards Development Organisations to help them develop the family of standards needed. We formally started work on this project in January, but things have been put on hold for a while, due to Covid 19. We hope to restart things soon.
We very much welcome experts to join us in this, so please get in touch, if you would like to find out more.
IEC_TS_63273_ED1_City_Information_Modeling_Use_Case_Collection_20191211.pdf 3.62 MB · 1 download
Hi @Michael Mulquin
Many thanks for sharing this. It would be great to learn more about the use case information that you are collecting and to work out how best to share some of that thinking on the DT Hub (we’ll take a look at the attachment you shared to start with).
Also, please can you let this community know the best way to get involved in the project you mention.
Thanks again, Nick
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6 minutes ago, Nicholas said:
Hi @DRossiter87
A quick follow up while Tanguy is also having a think about this.
A lot of the DT Hub members have talked about a need for digital twins, and the data that feeds into them, to be “right time” rather than real time. This could vary considerably from say, long term planning related to requirements for housing, vs managing incidents that impact on public safety (where real time, or near real time data might be required).
@Michael Mulquin and others it would be great if you also have any particular thoughts on this please.
Many thanks
Nick
I agree that “right time” is better. The contrast is really between static data, where the focus is not time related at all – data about the physical buildings and urban environment, about general demographics etc, and data about how things change over time. If you are wanting to monitor change – either to react to what is happening or to look at scenarios about what changes might happen, then you need data at the time intervals that are important. I guess that is one area where we need to change our draft definition!
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Another question – for @Tanguy and all.
What are the most valuable/attractive use cases for digital twins in cities?
(Maybe some of these might add more examples to help with the right time vs real time debate too)
Many thanks,
Nick
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Just now, Nicholas said:
Another question – for @Tanguy and all.
What are the most valuable/attractive use cases for digital twins in cities?
(Maybe some of these might add more examples to help with the right time vs real time debate too)
Many thanks,
Nick
Hi Nick,
Yes, we recently hosted a webinar on Value where we looked at possible use cases for digital twins. What seemed to resonate well as the idea that use cases was the application of “people”, “planet” and “profit” as domains for each use case.
This also seems to have parallels with the Flourishing systems report (published this morning): https://www.cdbb.cam.ac.uk/files/flourishing-systems_final_digital.pdf which focuses on economical infrastructure, social infrastructure, and natural environment.
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12 minutes ago, Nicholas said:
Hi @Michael Mulquin
Many thanks for sharing this. It would be great to learn more about the use case information that you are collecting and to work out how best to share some of that thinking on the DT Hub (we’ll take a look at the attachment you shared to start with).
Also, please can you let this community know the best way to get involved in the project you mention.
Thanks again, Nick
The IEC is a sister organisation of ISO and we have the same normal process for people to get involved, which is via their national Standards organisation – in the UK it would be via BSI. However, for our systems work we are more flexible. Systems Committees in the IEC can offer “R” membership to interested bodies, which enables them to take a full role in our work. We also can utilise a “pool of experts” to provide us with individual comments and suggestions. If anyone would like to find out more – let me know.
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Another question to everybody.
In our current environment, where we are all considering the path towards economic recovery and protecting against future shocks…how can digital twins make our cities more resilient?
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