Towards Effective Multi-Scale Coupled Urban Systems
The Computational Urban Sciences Group at ORNL, in partnership with NREL and several external stakeholders, have stood up a real-time digital twin focused on mobility for Chattanooga. The system has brought in 500+ real-time data feeds from 5 systems across 3 institutions, with at least 40 other secondary data sets. This has created an unprecedented opportunity to observe, anticipate, and orchestrate cyber-physical controls towards a 20% energy savings objective for the region. The next phase of this work is expanding the region of interest into Georgia and towards the nearby cities of Nashville and Knoxville, as well as strong collaboration with freight partners and the public works to apply AI-based solutions for transformational changes in transportation efficiency leading to significant energy savings. This talk focuses on the experiences in obtaining real-time data from location enabled sensors from infrastructure and how it is heralding a fundamental shift in how we interact with our urban environment. Many of our day-to-day activities are increasingly being driven by data and derived knowledge which are modulating our interactions. While the talk will focus on the Chattanooga Digital Twin, Jibo hopes to share experiences from other projects that are shaping the discussion around urban environments that are at the intersection of computing and complex urban systems in the emerging environment of smart cities, energy infrastructures, a modernizing electric grid, smarter and sustainable mobility, responsive buildings, changing impacts of severe weather and climate, data driven emergency response, and resiliency.