Urban models, like digital twins, are used by decision-makers to manage and plan for uncertain futures. Digital twins are models that abstract reality and test ‘what-if’ scenarios in a virtual environment. This collaboration bridges pre-existing projects on digital twin models conducted at the National University of Singapore and Cornell University. The NUS team is examining the human-model interaction in the model making process of a digital twin project in Singapore. The Cornell team has surveyed digital twin models globally, constructing a database of over 50 digital twin platforms to examine the gap between rhetoric found in marketing literature and the technical realities of each software platform. This grant will support collaborative workshops, journal paper writing, and model development. The objective of this collaboration is to establish a comparative lens on digital twin models, to develop a multidimensional method, and to prototype an alternative practice of digital twin model construction.

Cornell PI: Farzin Lotfi-Jam 
NUS PI: Chaewon Ahn
Collaborators: Connor Graham, Chang Jiat Hwee, Rudi Stouffs, Flip Biljecki, Yi-Chieh Lee & Steven Jackson 

Funding Agency: Cornell-NUS Global Strategic Collaboration Awards 
Project Duration: 1 January 2023 – 31 May 2024