Local Digital Twin

What is a (Local) Digital Twin?

Applied in the city context, a Digital Twin is the digital replica of certain parts of or the whole city environment, providing policy makers with the opportunity to experiment risk-free with policy choices in its digital environment. How does it work then? This replica models and visualises integrated real-time data from IoT devices, location, weather, traffic, people movement and other information sources, making processes, data and complex interrelations understandable, while enabling active interaction with the system.

Digital twins provide a powerful operating system for decision makers, who can test the effectiveness and expected impact of a certain potential policy and related measures, make real-time evidence-based operational decisions, and longer term policy choices. In its digital environment diverse datasets, (3D) maps, assets, powerful algorithms for analyses and dashboarding for superb insights are brought altogether. It can benefit a city in all phases of its lifecycle: from initial urban planning and construction, current city monitoring and management, as well as future planning!

What are the benefits for the city?

• Urban building planning and building operations management
• Predictive sustainable mobility planning through measuring and studying mobility patterns
• Better crisis response time and management through creation of data services that inform about extreme weather events, seismic activity etc.
• Better energy flow management (e.g. by managing public buildings’ energy consumption or adjusting city lights according to usability patterns)
• Digital Twins or parts of them open to the public can help citizens experience better and faster public services
• Monitoring the effectiveness of sustainability measures resulting from analyses made from the processing of real-time environmental data
• Real-time evaluations of the environmental impact of different policy measures can automate policy and scenario planning with the aim of reaching climate neutrality

What are the steps you need to take? 

Essentially, it’s one: getting in touch with the Digital Toolbox!

Depending on the data, infrastructure, and assets that you have, we can come up with a solution that fits your organisation and current goals. All you need to do is define the purpose and the use case for which you want to use a Digital Twin, as well as the area and the assets that you would need it for. The Digital Toolbox is then here to help you with procuring your need, finding the right suppliers and integrating the solution; all in a seamless way!

More info on the particular steps here.

The Digital Toolbox is the portal to Next Generation Solutions (NGSs): the future of technology in the city made simple and easy. Our company, Serendipity develops NGSs with ecosystem partners from industry and academia in order to create future proof solutions to address the challenges of (local) governments, campuses and other organisations. Future proof solutions provide the ability to change, expand, or remove parts of the system in order to adapt to changing needs and circumstances. In that way vendor lock-ins are prevented and the costs for software will stay low over time!