At the invitation of the Hessian Ministry of Digital Affairs, researcher Tobias Gebhard (German Aerospace Center and emergenCITY) presented ideas on urban data platforms, in particular digital twins, to representatives of Hessian municipalities.
Hessian municipalities that receive funding from the Hessian Ministry of Digital Affairs for a smart region project as part of the “Starke Heimat Hessen” program regularly share their experiences online. These include cities and municipalities that have set up or are planning to set up comprehensive data platforms with data on traffic volumes, noise pollution and water levels, among other things. They invited Tobias Gebhard to one of these events entitled “Municipal data platforms” on February 20. He is a research associate at the LOEWE center emergenCITY and at the Institute for the Protection of Terrestrial Infrastructures at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
In a presentation, Tobias Gebhard introduced emergenCITY and the research of his working group on digital twins for infrastructures to the municipal representatives. He pointed out various crisis scenarios such as natural disasters, power outages or wars that are being considered within emergenCITY, added a look at critical infrastructures and explained the importance of digital resilience. As an example, he presented the emergenCITY mission “Knowledge Base”, in which research is being conducted on a crisis-proof data platform of a smart city for the exchange of urban data from different sources.
He also explained the research results on digital twins of infrastructures obtained during the cooperation. In the future, they should help to maintain an overview of urban infrastructures during a crisis and use simulations in real time to find out what consequences certain measures could have on electricity, water and transport systems. Finally, he gave a brief insight into the application-oriented research demonstrator “NEXUS”. The real-time simulator uses an interactive user interface to investigate disruptions and the resulting effects on critical infrastructures.
News on digital twins for more resilient critical infrastructures
“Starke Heimat Hessen” funding program
DLR Institute for the Protection of Terrestrial Infrastructures
