Digital twins on trial: Can they actually solve wicked societal problems and change the world for better?
Year: 2024
Type: editorial
Abstract: Digital twins on trial: Can they actually solve wicked societal problems and change the world for better?In this Editorial, we draw on our collective experience working across a variety of disciplines and application domains at the Alan Turing Institute to place Digital Twins on metaphorical trial, asking whether they have the potential to offer solutions to big, complex, wicked 1 social and urban challenges, or whether their application should remain limited to improving jet engines (Trimble, 2022) or, perhaps, urban transportation systems (Feng et al., 2023).This is an important and timely question to ask, as the popularity of Digital Twins is increasing precisely at a time when analytical and data-driven solutions are clearly needed to address questions of critical societal importance.The 'wicked' questions that we might want to ask include: why, in the 21st century, in a wealthy nation like the UK, are 4.7 million people living in food poverty (Francis-Devine et al., 2003)?Or, how does it happen that half of all children born in 2009-2010 in Liverpool, a major UK city, were referred to Children's Services before the age of five (Bennett et al., 2024)?In this piece, we discuss some of the barriers that are preventing Digital Twin technology from helping with these questions and highlight current efforts, including those as part of the Turing's Urban Analytics programme, that may help to overcome these obstacles.The questions we pose above may appear overly narrow and not the appropriate domain for Digital Twins (DTs).Consider, however, that these tangible and measurable outcomes result from complex interactions between, for example, food systems, financial systems, care networks, transport and infrastructure networks, and many other quantifiable components of urban systems.Consider also that DTs are frequently touted as a technocratic solution to urban wellbeing challenges.If DTs cannot address the immediate wellbeing challenges of urban inhabitantsfor example, food, shelter, health, and fuelwhat good are they?And, more importantly, what is needed to bridge the gap between DT potential and what they currently achieve?For those who may not have noticed, DTs are having a moment (Batty, 2018;Tomko and Winter, 2019).Adopted by quantitative geographers, urban analysts, planners and civil engineers alike, the term 'Digital Twin' has become almost ubiquitous in certain circles.They have certainly generated substantial interest in the pages of this journalthe forthcoming 'Digital Twins for Cities' special issue, for exampleas well as in other journals such as Nature Computational Science's 'The Increasing Potential and Challenges of Digital Twins' (Nat Comput Sci, 2024).In an extraordinary crossover, DTs have captured the imaginations not only of academic researchers, but also policymakers and practitioners.Enthusiasm spans academic disciplines, domains, and practice.DTs have come of age at a critical juncture, able to leverage the advantages of 21 st century data (big, smart, and frequent), computing (power, speed, and distributed systems), and modelling (dynamic, integrated, and flexible) to understand and resolve complex challenges, whether related to transport, infrastructure, or land use.Although 'riddled with ambiguity' (Batty, 2024), the term DT broadly refers to a precise computer representation, or virtual copy, of a machine or system.Unlike typical computer models, a 'twin' is likely to be composed of numerous interconnected digital objects that are combined to form
Language: English
Subfield: Media Technology
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4399570712