Digital Twin: A Step Towards Smart Cities in Urban Planning, Design and Management

Abstract

The city of Tehran will face various challenges in the coming years due to population growth and increasing complexity, making the tasks of urban management more complex. Most of the tools and methods available in the field of urbanism are based on static approaches and involve a limited number of stakeholders in relevant decisions. In this regard, one of the main requirements to reach the smart city is to have a digital model of the city, which is discussed in the world as "Digital Twin". Digital transformation makes more parts of planning, decision-making, and design processes clearer and more understandable to the general public. An important approach to this transformation is the digital twins of Tehran. In this regard, the main purpose of this article is to focus on introducing the concept of digital twins as a necessity in the era of smart cities and also to implement a practical way to achieve this concept in Tehran.The main research tool of this article is CityEngine software. In this research, a part of Tehran has turned into a digital model that is in line with the concept of digital twins. To achieve this, procedural modelling algorithms have been used in the CityEngine software environment. Initially, a database of descriptive data was collected to generate Tehran digital twins. Then, descriptive data are modelled by programming in the CityEngine software environment. This digital twin of Tehran with different levels of detail, in the level of urban planning, urban design, and urban management, has been programmed as a smart code that with each change in the current data, existing models and reports from the city will change immediately and will be updated with new data.

Keywords

• procedural modelling
• digital twin
• 3d city model
• cityengine
• smart tehran