IIC Journal of Innovation 12th Edition | Page 53

Creating Cities of the Future with Digital Twin Technology benefits so they can truly envision how proposed changes will improve their own neighborhood. temperature and pressure information to identify pump inefficiencies and potential leaks. This digital twin proof-of-concept model focuses on the market demand created by progressive government leaders around the world setting zero emissions goals. Renewable energy planning requires coordinated access to time of use and energy demand data, distributed energy management, load forecasting algorithms and product performance characteristics of existing and emerging renewable energy infrastructure elements. Historically, energy consumption data has remained siloed at the utility. To accurately model and transform the energy system, the digital twin concept leverages these “utility- owned” and “city-managed” data sets such as: This digital twin concept embraces an open architecture whereby a marketplace of digital twins may be made broadly available to facilitate innovation and collaboration among the various stakeholders. By creating an ecosystem of open-data sourced device twins, any city may leverage efforts across multiple sectors to optimize resource allocation across a number of smart city applications. This approach promotes integrated uses of technologies and services that, in the initial use case example of DER planning, provides resiliency, ensures time- of-use electricity signals align with marginal carbon emissions signals and expedites the process from plan to action for zero emissions goals. Using an open digital twin platform approach, city leaders not only make data-driven investments in infrastructure, but avoid having to manage multiple siloed systems as it adds services to benefit its citizens in the future.     Historical and predicted power consumption by neighborhood Infrastructure mapping and maps of utility assets Local environmental data Street maps, census data and neighborhood information (what neighborhoods are in a district, city or county and how their boundaries are defined). A D IGITAL T WIN C ONCEPT FOR D ISTRIBUTED E NERGY R ESOURCES While the value of combining mixed reality with a digital twin drives understanding and education for citizens that will be impacted by the proposed changes, a digital twin platform is an ideal forecasting and planning tool for virtual Smart City pilots by planners and operators of clean energy infrastructure projects such as gas, water and people movement. While the urgent focus is on decarbonization, a city-focused digital twin platform may also be used to model other city services such as a city’s fresh and wastewater system. In the case of water distribution, a digital twin platform may ingest supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) data together with other information such as acoustic signals, To address the emergent clean energy use case, Itron developed a web-based user - 48 - November 2019