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Investment in Digital Twins will revolutionise urban development

Thursday, August 22, 2019

​With today’s technology that enables the creation of digital twins, a car or airplane can be modeled, simulated and optimized before it leaves the drafting table. A progress that is about to become reality even for something as complex as whole cities. Swedish innovation agency Vinnova have recently announced a grand and long-term investment into a Chalmers based competence centre that will lead the development.

​Cities are the largest and most complex human artifacts, and also the most resource consuming and waste producing.  The share of the world’s population living in cities is increasing every year, which also increases the need for a transformation into sustainable design of our cities. The integration of digital methods can be of great support in this challenge. Like the process of designing an airplane or a car based on mathematical modeling, simulation and optimisation, cities could be designed to become more livable, efficient and resilient as they may be analysed and experienced before they are built. The undertaking from Vinnova makes the basis of a total investment of SEK 100 million to create opportunities to analyze and test the components of urban development in a completely new way.    

 – We are extremely happy and proud. Behind our application is very hard and long-term work from a committed team at Chalmers in close collaboration with our partners, says Professsor Anders Logg,  Department of Mathematical Sciences and one of two designated directors of the centre. 

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Digital twins is a concept that have revolutionized the manufacturing industry and is used daily to construct increasingly refined products. The technology has spread to include the planning and development of our cities but is usually limited to visual representation. Digital Twin Cities will develop the concept of digital twins for cities by modeling and simulating the city as a complex multi-physics system based on real-time data.   

Read the news article on chalmers.se