Barcelona will have a digital replica that will allow “optimizing the design” of public policies. The city council has presented this Wednesday a project designed together with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – National Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS).
So far, this collaboration has given birth to a Web platform that will make it possible to assess whether the accessibility of public facilities to find out if the Catalan capital meets the requirements to be a 15 minute city, that is, a city where all the essentials are within a quarter of an hour on foot or by bicycle. This platform maps the Catalan capital and has allowed the authorities to find out what type of facilities are within reach in that time range, allowing them to see the proximity coverage of future lines of the meter L8 and L9, the electrical charging points, the hospitals or the seasons Bicing.
This is only the first phase of a project that will develop a digital twin that in the future it can be used by other cities. “The future objective is to have a platform that allows real-time calculation of the environmental impact, air quality, traffic routes, the sustainability of the economy, the transformation of spaces such as ‘superilles‘ or the optimization of infrastructures”, explains the researcher Fernando Cucchietti, leader of the BSC-CNS Data Analysis and Visualization team, to EL PERIÓDICO.
Barcelona has been the first pilot city for this technology and viladecans will be the second This tool could be operational within a period of 2 to 4 years, as reported.
What is a digital twin?
A digital twin is an exact digital replica of something that exists in the physical world, be it a person, an object, or a city. Its mission is to allow researchers to run simulations to predict the effects of possible changes on that object. Based on this, decision-making can be optimized, saving time and money. This efficiency in the administration of resources is especially key in the urban development of a city.
This technological trend – which uses the artificial intelligencehe 3D and augmented reality, among others – is used in many sectors and processes. NASA engineers, for example, use them to learn how their spacecraft will perform in space, factories to streamline the production line, and oncologists to treat cancer more efficiently.
Related news
In the same way, Barcelona’s digital twin will allow the city council to better plan the deployment of infrastructures, make more precise monitoring of the city’s streets and anticipate possible failures “to improve the quality of life of citizens”. “They are very powerful tools to be able to digitally test different proposals and extract information that helps decide which public policies or which projects can be more efficient to achieve the desired objectives,” explained the consistory.
This will be possible thanks to the BSC-CNS in collaboration with the Institut Municipal d’Informàtica (IMI) and the urban development agency Regional Barcelona (BR), who will be the end user of this digital twin.