[Michael Mulquin]

In IEC Smart Cities Systems Committee we are working on a definition from our perspective. Our draft is:

Digital Twin

formal, explicit, computer-readable and computer-executable digital representation of an object or system that allows a computer to understand that object or system

Note 1

Digital twins can be made of material objects and systems (house, city, human, electrical distribution system etc.) and of immaterial objects (process, project plan, etc.)

Note 2

Digital twins can be primary, when the digital representation is developed before the physical object or system is built to help in the design or construction of that object or system. Or they can be secondary, when they are developed to represent an object or system that already exists in the physical world.

Note 3

A digital twin of an existing object or system is created from data gathered from Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, with scientific and social-science modelling, machine learning and other advanced analytics applied to replicate the behaviour of that object or system, supporting decision making.

Note 4

A digital twin of an existing object or system is more than just a model: it must have a two-way connection with that object or system and should provide dynamic as well as static representations of that object or system. Data needs to flow between the physical twin and the digital, enabling insights and creating the opportunity for positive interventions within the physical twin.

Clearly Note 4 has some “should”s in it, so we need to correct this!

[Michael Mulquin]

The School of Cities at the University of Toronto is partnering with ISO/IEC JTC1, along with ISO TC 204 on intelligent Transport, to put together a hub to enable people working on data models that are relevant to cities to share information and discuss common issues. I know OGC (via Peter Parslow from Ordnance Survey)  is involved in this.

[Michael Mulquin]

1 minute ago, DRossiter87 said:

Hi @Michael Mulquin.  People are more than welcome to suggest terms and definitions that have been used elsewhere such as those within the ISO online browsing platform and  IEC electropedia.  However, these terms need to be carefully considered to ensure that they are fit for purpose for the DT Hub community.

Exactly, and that is the point I was making. Many definitions in these glossaries were developed for specific purposes and we found were not necessarily relevant to smart cities. But it was an important starting place for us, and it meant that we needed to consider why we needed to reject the existing definitions before starting work on developing our own. We found that, even where existing definitions were not suitable, there was often some useful ideas that we could take forward in developing our own one.  

[Michael Mulquin]

4 minutes ago, Neil Thomspon said:

Built is generally the verb. Building a scope around the built environment is tough as it sits on top of the natural environment etc. Do you have an idea on other frames we could explore? 

ISO 37105 – Descriptive Framework for Cities and Communities – provides a framework to describe the key entities within a city.

It describes each element in detail and includes a fairly detailed ontology. 

[Michael Mulquin]

3 minutes ago, Neil Thomspon said:

@holgerkessler – this is a great question! We will use the meta data of the shared status of a term to learn the connectivity to existing standards. We will aslo learn if there are any overlaps too!

I know it is an adjacent subject, but in our IEC Smart Cities Terminology Working Group, when developing definitions for terms, we initially searched through the IEC, ISO and ITU glossaries and captured whatever relevant definitions we could find there. Our preference was then to take an existing definition, if it was suitable, as this would help consistency with other standards work. If no existing definitions were quite right, the next stage would be to see if there was an existing definition which could be made appropriate by adding an explanatory note. Only when we couldn’t do any of these did we develop a new definition.

[Michael Mulquin]

9 minutes ago, Neil Thomspon said:

Hey @Miranda Sharp, good question! Yes, if we look at things like Github and Stackoverflow in the software world we can see how effective it is to connect technical people in this way. interestingly it creates a vital learning environment!

We had a similar approach, though much more clunky, in our IEC Smart Cities Systems Committee Terminology Working Group. We wanted to ensure that the members of the other working groups could suggest terms that needed definitions, could suggest definitions for those terms and could comment on the suggested definitions from others. It provided a great foundation for the Working Group to get going as we had a clear indication of the terms that were most important for our members and were able to begin from a position which made it much easier to build consensus on what the terms should be.

[Michael Mulquin]

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.

[Michael Mulquin]

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!

[Michael Mulquin]

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

[Michael Mulquin]

I’d very much value comments and suggestions of how to improve this.

 

[Michael Mulquin]

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.