Please see this presentation for the proposed solution (for now mainly a concept that needs to be explored and discussed)

Agenda for working table:

Greetings from Aarhus

• Kim, Jeppe and Mikkel

Great questions Kim. Ill check with our departments and see what they think of them.

HI @kimsovso we have been in contact with the City of Rotterdam that is also working on a Urban Digital Twin. I could put you in contact. I really like this work.

Really interesting concept! Johanneberg Science Park and Gothenburg City are partners in a recently launched “Digitial Twin Center” here in Gothenburg, led by Chalmers University of Technology. @agot.watne from Gothenburg City is involved and might have more material to share with you. This Digital Twin Cities Center will involve researchers from many different areas of research as well as industry partners and organisations from the civil sector, and the activities will be divided into following areas:

• Digital Twin PlatformUrban Planning and Design
• Architectural and Structural Design
• Digital Construction
• Modelling & Simulation at the District Level
• Modelling and simulation at the City Level
• Visualisation & Auralisation
• Data Management & Integration

More information can be found here: https://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/ace/news/Pages/Digital-Twins-will-revolutionise-urban-development.aspx

A meeting with some people involved in this Center might be beneficial for your concept in Aarhus. I will try to join your session tomorrow.
/Eva

Bradford is really interested in this concept, but are starting from a low base. Hopefully we can build on the experiences of Aarhus, Gothenburg and others.

@Adrian has been scoping possibilities and liaising with University of Bradford Faculty of Archaeology and Forensics which has considerable expertise in 3D modelling.

@sydsimpson

In Hamburg the HAW (Hamburg University of Applied Science) is developing a digital traffic Twin. Unfortunately the Project website is only in german.

Hi Eva

Thank you for your reply! I saw the mention of the DTC earlier here somewhere but did not have a chance to dig deeper into it. Would love to do so.

I think the main challenge might be the Open Sourcing of 3D models, especially if they are based on (typically expensive/proprietary) game development tools like Unity or VR/AR-based tools/systems but I haven’t really looked that much into it.

Regards,
Kim

Summary of Working Table on Urban Digital Twin.

Objective of this WT was to jointly explore and discuss the concept and opportunities of creating/having an ”urban digital twin”.

We from City of Aarhus are working with (3D) digital city models in different ways ranging from the more GIS-based models for internal, administrative use to the more creative ones targeted at the citizens. We are currently gearing up to create a dynamic “digital twin” of the city based on a Unity model of the city centre.

In this “twin” we envision dynamic/near real-time visualisation of IoT-data collected in the urban space allowing for citizens to discover IoT and data in the urban space by navigating the 3D model.

We also would like to publish “live” data from different assets e.g. our light rail, buses, municipal vehicles based on GPS or the rail time table.

Furthermore we want the 3D model to reflect larger events e.g. the upcoming Volvo Ocean Race event taking place in and near the harbor (display ships based on GPS data, event facilities such as tents, food trucks etc.)

Q/A

Who would be the target groups for such as platform?

City Planners for city planning within the municipality. Property developers. Tourist information. An example of using digital twins for communicating natural disasters in Norway were mentioned. Focus on simulating visualization flooding scenarios.

Citizens - It’s important to engage the citizens in our technology usage in the City, and a digital model is - in my opinion a good way to do that.

People who look at crowd flow control. Citizen participation.

Citizen and communication of social distancing during crisis situations.

There is potential to make existing data more discoverable as citizens can see the data around them in the environment

Links provided during this question:

https://www.smartopenhamburg.de/

Moving into the inside of buildings and how this could help us with service delivery - example of a local pub: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=zqpvdjjDScv&play=1&ts=1&guides=0&brand=1&title=1

A teaser video from VirtualCity led by Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg

What kind of data would be interesting/relevant to display in such model? In which way?

Noise pollution and traffic flow data. A digital ‘smog’ could be an idea. Pieter writes: Traffic flow data: I saw a demo of Antwerp where they see what the impact was of making a two way street oneway, or even a no car zone and what the impact would be on both the traffic model, as well as air quality.

Simulating transit planning changes.

Here is a teaser on how the data will be visualized from Gothenburg City together with Chalmers University https://youtu.be/LBs-toKECbY

There might be a requirement to show what is not always visible. Perhaps a digital ‘smog’ for poor air quality.

What data should not be published in such a model?

Personal and sensitive data should not be visualized. Data should be filtered. You should choose what data you want.

Eva proposes that not all data should be public.

When and where could such as model be put into use - and in what wat?

Webbased seems the way to go for citizens. For disables people it could be interesting in an AR-form, but from home.

Usage depend on the target-group.

Help or assistance in relation to accessibility (point of view from e.g. handicapped or elderly people)

Is the project open/public?

The projects should be open with the possibility of feeding data into the model with an API.

What tool are you using for building the 3D models?

The model itself is based on Unity. People mention the open source tool Blender. Bo mentions that the bench is made in 3DStudio Max.

Do you currently have data from any external sources in the model?

No, but this is something we would like to explore.

Other things:

Samaneh mentions: I could make a link to the responsibles in a similar project with focus on traffic flow in a digital twin context.

Kim from Gothenburg mentions that the city is working on a digital twin.

A webgl example built in 3js: https://demos.littleworkshop.fr/infinitown