Digital twin are large complex social and technical systems, that, in addition to being created and used in the architecture, engineering, construction and owner operated (AECOO) sectors to construct, operate and manage physical assets, digital twins are also used as immersive media in virtual reality environments accessible with virtual reality peripherals. City officials also use digital twins to pre-empt, predict, and prevent the potential harms caused by natural calamities such as floods related to climate change, to model scenarios for urban planning, and as place to conduct public consultations. Further, they augment knowledge about infrastructure, they are a spatial data infrastructure, and they are records. As fledgling systems, it is argued, that digital twin creators construct them in such a way that these be open, considered a public goods and their data lifecycle can be managed.

Without consideration for governance - data & technical, digital strategies, public policy and legalities, and public engagement, digital twins risk gaining the same negative public attention as smart cities and the Sidewalk Labs Quayside Toronto Project did, including META. There is much public good that can be derived from digital twins, especially if those involved in their creation, become more public facing and engage the public and governors in their creation and use, build them as open interoperable systems and incorporate them into existing spatial data infrastructures, and conceptualize them as shared public spaces where we can imagine, plan and model the future together. Since digital twin will become an infrastructure of infrastructures, ought we not build them now as public goods for mutual wellbeing and benefit?

Presenter:

• Dr. Tracey Lauriault,
  Associate Professor, Carleton University