Digital Twins II

Abstract

Digital Twins have been around since the early 2000s, but it has only been until now that they started to be affordable thanks to the Internet of Things. In the realm of smart cities, a Digital Twin is a virtual model of a city, a replica of the physical world, which are rapidly becoming indispensable tools to visualize the pulse of the city in real time with layered data sources of buildings, urban infrastructure, utilities, businesses, movement of people and vehicles. The advantages of implementing this concept is that it significantly increases the city's stability. Testing in a virtual model helps prevent emergencies, properly allocate resources that reduces costs and the chances of failure in the real world. This project is a continuation of the last year's theoretical study Digital Twins Ⅰ and its aim is to continue the research about Digital City Twins and explore the Big Data from the city sensors of Vilanova i la Geltrú. A group of five international students, led by the company Neapolis, are working on transforming the city into a smart one within the summer semester of the academic year 2020- 2021. In the process, we studied scientific articles, consulted with university professors from different countries (Spain, Belgium, Brazil), contacted IT and Data Security companies to obtain the necessary information. The report provides a study of practical examples using Digital Twins around the world, their impact on the city improvement, comparison of different platforms and software for developing Digital Twins and the reasoned choice of the best option for use in the next part of the project. Furthermore, it describes Information Infrastructure of Digital Cities, Big Data Management, Data Security and the implementation of Digital Twins in Vilanova i la Geltrú. The Big Data received from the city authorities was read and analyzed in the data part with necessary conclusions. This project made a great contribution to the further development of the Digital Twins for Vilanova i la Geltrú and will simplify the practical implementation for our followers of the next EPS project.