Chapter 6: Case studies: District-scale digital twins

Digital twins are essentially computer models of real systems that not only simulate their functioning but interact with a real system so that it can be managed, designed and operated to achieve its basic purpose. Such twins are organised like any model to mirror the dynamics of the real system; there is a general consensus that a good digital twin is ‘as close as possible’ to the system itself. This is to enable the twin to interact with the real system, forming a synergy that augments its functioning in various ways. The twin monitors and can change the real system while the system can learn and improve its own functioning from the twin. The basic conundrum, of course, is that the closer the real system and the twin come to one another, the closer they are to ‘merger’. But as the twin is composed of digital media, it can never replace the physical components of what is being modelled, what is being twinned.