IIC Journal of Innovation 12th Edition | Page 51

Creating Cities of the Future with Digital Twin Technology used to identify, classify and predict the impact of renewable resources and climate mitigation efforts to neighborhood grids in cities, including rooftop solar systems, public electric vehicle charge station placement and battery storage. These same tools may be used to conduct what-if scenarios for infrastructure changes to traffic patterns on major thoroughfares, identify inefficiencies in fresh and wastewater infrastructure and educate citizens on impacts of civic programs and incentive programs. This article explores how the combination of an open digital twin marketplace, artificial intelligence, geographic information system and open data sources will enable researchers, private entities, policy makers and the public to take effective and timely action to reduce the sources of air pollution and accelerate the transition to increased renewable energy generation. associated performance characteristics such as maximum and minimum load, operating temperature characteristics, directionality in the case of automobiles, network messaging, water and electrons and other operating environment specifications. The digital twins feature preloaded attributes in a spatial graph to facilitate training of machine learning models. These discrete twins may be arranged in a virtual network and communicate with each other and draw upon each other with spatial awareness as they do in a real deployed network. Using such a system, a neighborhood planner may conduct “what if” scenarios to optimize conditions (i.e., traffic flow), pump efficiencies, grid resiliency improvements and see the potential impact of these assets on existing and planned infrastructure elements. Once assets are deployed, the digital twin platform serves as an operational tool to monitor and service the area. W HAT IS A D IGITAL T WIN IN THE C ONTEXT OF A S MART C ITY ? The Itron digital twin concept arose from examination of the use of digital twins in smart building energy management. Our team sought to discover whether this approach may be used for smart city planning and management. What if we expand the application of a digital twin from commercial real estate to municipalities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Would it be possible to model, validate and optimize sensing networks before deploying assets? The concept of a digital twin is generally accepted as a software representation of a physical system that behaves in virtual space identically as in the real world. To create a digital twin of elements in an urban neighborhood for example, a library of devices such as transformers, streetlights, energy meters, solar panels, EV chargers and bus and rail systems is necessary. Each urban “twin” is programmed to behave as its physical counterpart and incorporates - 46 - November 2019