Page 30 - A U4SSC deliverable - Accelerating city transformation using frontier technologies

Digital twin

Overview of digital twin

A digital twin is a digital replica of something in the physical world. It could be a car, a mobile phone,
or even a city. A key enabler of the digital twin is IoT. Computers and machines are able to recreate
physical objects in the digital world using data gathered by intelligent sensors and devices. In turn,
city scientists can gather insights about how to improve operations by experimenting on the digital
replica. Combined with AI and Big data analytics, a digital twin can create a 3-D model of a city and
carry out virtual simulations on urban infrastructure, utilities and vehicle movements during emergency
situations. The digital twin has significant potential in improving operational efficiency, resiliency and
sustainability, reducing maintenance issues, optimising production outputs, and much more.
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The growing importance of digital twin is also reflected in its growing market values. The digital twin
market is expected to grow from USD 3.8 billion in 2019 to USD 35.8 billion by 2025. 73

The concept of a digital twin has been around since 2002. However, it is the advancement of IoT that
has made the 3-D model more affordable and accessible, allowing businesses and cities to create a
digital twin to improve operational efficiency, safety and resiliency. And yet, there are still challenges to
creating a “digital twin” and leveraging this technology to facilitate the digital transformation. One of the
main challenges is to extract the necessary data to create a virtual counterpart of a large-scale object
like a city. Data silos often persists in legacy systems or other old physical systems. Converging data from
these legacy systems into an accessible template to create a virtual twin can be a challenging process.
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Digital twin and cities

The digital twin can provide a holistic view of cities’ physical infrastructure through 3-D modelling and
can have transformative potential in changing the way cities operate and manage resources. By using
the digital twin, cities are able to monitor environmental and traffic conditions, simulate responses
during disaster scenarios, improve public health and safety and much more. An actionable digital
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twin can give cities the ability to gather insights on key infrastructure, carry out data-driven analytics
to improve city asset management and extend the life of these assets and equipment. The digital
twin can also provide the most accurate information on the city, facilitating collaboration among city
stakeholders with greater transparency. With open data, anyone can access the information provided by
the digital twin and develop applications that can solve urban challenges, driving bottom-up solutions.
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Among the benefits that a digital twin can bring to cities, making city infrastructure more resilient to
climate change and natural disasters is of the utmost importance. Flooding, tornados, heavy rainfall,
and other extreme weather events can bring devastating consequences to cities, damaging roads,
bridges, hospitals, and buildings, along with other key institutions, and causing the loss of life. With a
digital twin, the city department can perform risk assessments and simulate “what-if” scenarios that
could give precious insights into a city’s ability to respond to emergency situations, thus, allowing
resiliency teams to better prepare and anticipate changing environmental conditions and to make
informed decisions during actual outbreaks.

20 Accelerating city transformation using frontier technologies | A U4SSC deliverable