Unravelling the Use of Digital Twins to Assist Decision- and Policy-Making in Smart Cities

TL;DR

This paper reviews existing literature to establish a foundation for developing digital twin-based decision support systems aimed at enhancing policy-making and governance in smart cities.

Contribution

It provides a systematic review and conceptual framework for applying digital twins to support decision-making and policy development in the smart city context.

Findings

Digital twins are increasingly used in smart city planning.

Existing literature emphasizes decision support and policy aid.

Future research will focus on sustainable smart city models.

Abstract

This short paper represents a systematic literature review that sets the basis for the future development of a framework for digital twin-based decision support in the public sector, specifically for the smart city domain. The final aim of the research is to model context-specific digital twins for aiding the decision-making processes in smart cities and devise methods for defining the policy agenda. Overall, this short paper provides a foundation, based on the main concepts from existing literature, for further research in the role and applications of urban digital twins to assist decision- and policy-making in smart cities. The existing literature analyses common applications of digital twins in smart city development with a focus on supporting decision- and policy-making. Future work will centre on developing a digital-twin-based sustainable smart city and defining different scenarios concerning challenges of good governance, especially so-called wicked problems, in smaller-scale urban and non-urban contexts.