planning & modelling

Urban Digital Twins (UDTs) combine 3D City Models with real-time IoT data to provide an up-to-date representation of the physical environment. This lecture presents the steps towards integrating dynamic sensor data with city models and interactive 3D web map visualization.

Year of publication: 2023

Travel demand is an essential input for the creation of traffic models. However, estimating travel demand to accurately represent traffic behaviour usually requires the collection of extensive sets of data on traffic behaviour. Traffic counts are a comparably cost effective and reproducible source of information on travel demand. The utilisation of traffic counts to estimate demand is commonly found in the literature as the static and dynamic O-D estimation problem. A variety of approaches have been developed over recent decades to tackle this problem. Usually initial estimates of the O-D matrix are calibrated by utilising traffic counts and considering different assignment models. Other approaches for the estimation of travel demand solely based on traffic measurements can be found in the simulation software SUMO. The present work demonstrates the systematic development of a network model in SUMO in the inner city of Munich. In a sample network the estimation of travel demand through the tools flowrouter and routeSampler is tested by utilising flow measurements from induction loop detectors. The tests delivered unsatisfactory results, which is proven through observations of traffic flows in the resulting simulations as well as comparisons to historic traffic counts. The lack of sufficient detector data and the complexity of the sample network are discussed as the main reasons for the results. It is concluded that the applied tools should be tested in future studies with a more extensive dataset to perform a more comprehensive review of both tools. Therefore, we deliver specific requirements based on the network example of Munich.

Year of publication: 2023

Digital urban twin technology is currently being developed, prototyped and tested to address multiple challenges related to sustainable urban development. Crossing specialist sectors and departments, such technology aims to integrate, orchestrate and govern multiple models across domains and paradigms. However, currently available solutions are largely confined to singular, tailor-made and proprietary solutions that structurally limit the development and connection of various multi-paradigm and multi-scale models. In this paper, we present our work-in-progress on the use of multi-modelling approaches within Hamburg’s evolving modular digital urban twin infrastructure. Based on participatory multi-stakeholder workshops, we address the multi-domain issue of energetic renovation and its potential gentrification effects by creating a city-scale system dynamics and a neighborhood-scale agent-based model. Connecting them via an urban model platform, preliminary findings show that such a system-of-systems approach combined with a multi-stakeholder model development seems promising for the future of multi-modelling in the context of digital urban twins