Interconnecting Urban Networks: A Novel Approach to Digital Twins Through GlassBox Adaptation

Smart cities are transforming urban living by leveraging technology and data to optimize urban services, to improve resource efficiency, and to promote sustainability. Urban Digital Twins (UDTs) promise to play a central enabling role in this transformation. However, state-of-the-art digital twin models still have to address significant challenging issues, particularly in terms of interoperability and integration with complex and multilayered (often legacy) urban systems. Some emerging approaches rely on specific standards and ontologies, creating”information silos” peculiar to each digital twin solution. After discussing the related and still open technical challenges, this paper proposes a novel extension of the GlassBox urban simulation model to conceptualize a city as a multilayered network, where nodes can be entities at different levels of granularity, such as a single building, a urban energy network, or even an aggregated urban area. Our proposed solution aims to ensure interoperability between these layers by enabling seamless real-time data exchange and optimized resource management. Furthermore, integration between layers such as energy, transportation, and water is essential to ensure data synchronization and provide the basis for more advanced smart city services, e.g., energy consumption/production prediction. To practically exemplify the advantages of the proposed approach, our innovative model is also illustrated when supporting a case study that focuses on urban transportation systems.