Cities dip into immersive technologies

While a springtime visit to the Sunshine State sounds appealing, hopping on a flight might not be feasible. But you can go to Miami Gardens, a city north of Miami and just west of the beach, online anytime you want. The city joined the metaverse late last year when it launched Miami Gardens Virtual City, a 3D digital twin. From their computers or via an app, virtual visitors can explore points of interest, such as Hard Rock Stadium and the Formula One Miami Grand Prix Race.

It joins nearby Coral Gables and Orlando, both of which launched digital twins in 2022. They’re part of a slowly increasing number of governments using the technology. Las Vegas uses a digital twin to model future energy use, emissions, mobility and emergency management. New York City’s Fire Department is exploring the use of digital twins to speed up emergency response in traffic-congested areas by uncovering the causes of emergency response delays and testing potential solutions before attempting them on actual streets. 

A digital twin “provides … real-time data in real-time simulations that really come close to what’s happening in the physical world,” said Juan Londono, AR/VR policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, or ITIF. They can represent objects, processes or systems, including traffic patterns, assembly lines and even people. They “allow you to not only monitor things in real time, but experiment before doing very risky interventions,” he said.

That can be particularly helpful in urban planning, for instance. Officials can determine the potential impact of constructing, say, a multi-story apartment, office building or stadium by manipulating the data in a digital twin. “You can use the digital twin to see the whole environment and how it will affect—for example, foot traffic and car traffic and sewage,” he said. “You can start playing with those parameters and see how it’s going to impact a lot of neighborhoods every time you build something.”

The next generation of digital twins will also take advantage of technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality, commonly known as AR and VR. For instance, city workers could put on AR or VR goggles and see the digital twin in front of them. “It’s an extension of the capabilities,” Londono said. “At this point, I’d say digital twins are an AR/VR-adjacent technology. I think they go hand in hand. You can have a digital twin that’s entirely functional on a computer screen, and in some cases, that’s all you need because you just want to input the simulation and get the results,” he said. “But for urban planning, where you want better visual fidelity, you might start using augmented reality or virtual reality just to be able to zoom in, zoom out.”

Another area where digital twins and augmented reality show real promise is in on-the-job training and apprenticeships, Londono writes in a February ITIF report. “Digital twins allow for more significant interaction with the objects at hand,” he wrote, which gives students a near hands-on learning experience. The technology makes it easier to understand the workings of complex systems, from health care and human anatomy to airport management, housing construction, warehouse logistics or advanced manufacturing. 

For training, digital twins are often safer and less costly than hands-on training. Apprentices learning the electric trade, for example, can practice and make mistakes without risk of injury. Because most immersive training programs track attentiveness, they can also help students avoid accidents caused by inattention, the report said. As software training tools, digital twins allow students to learn at their convenience and save instructors from traveling to remote locations to conduct training sessions.

But adoption of digital twins in the U.S. needs to happen faster, Londono said, citing examples of the technology’s use abroad that he says puts this country at a digital disadvantage. The European Commission is already investing in a digital twin of the ocean to learn more about developing a sustainable blue economy and adapting to climate change. Its local digital twins program studies sustainable freight delivery and the digital skills essential for policymaking and improving citizen engagement. Meanwhile, Seoul, South Korea, began rolling out the first phase of its Metaverse Seoul project, which lets users explore the city and access municipal services for paying taxes and filing complaints.

In the U.S., development is hampered by several factors. For one, digital twins are still not well understood. Second, to use the technology requires investment, which presents a funding hurdle. Finally, data management strategies must be in place to ensure security and privacy for collecting data and feeding it to digital twin models. Other considerations laid out last February by the federal government include technical and infrastructure barriers and a need for revamped standards and regulations that address these complex systems.

From a budget perspective, the effort may be worth it. Governments can get a $9 return on investment for every $1 spent on digital twins for infrastructure, according to a November 2023 KPMG report, while ABI Research predicts that cities will save more than $282 billion annually by using digital twins.

“Digital twins are going to be the backbone of the smart city,” Londono said. “Data-driven decision-making and smart cities are really meshed in with technology to optimize their services, [so] you’re going to have to have digital twins if you want to be successful.”