Urban digital twins hold immense promise as live computational models of cities, synthesizing diverse knowledge, streaming data, and supporting decisions towards more inclusive planning and policy. The size, heterogeneity, and open-ended character of cities, however, pose many difficult questions, at the frontiers of what is currently possible in computational science. Overcoming these challenges provides pathways for fundamental progress in the field and a proving ground for its economic value and social relevance.
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Acknowledgements
I thank C. Brelsford, C. Catlett, C. Ratti, and Y. Zheng for discussions. This work was partially supported by the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation at the University of Chicago.
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Bettencourt, L.M.A. Recent achievements and conceptual challenges for urban digital twins. Nat Comput Sci 4, 150â153 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-024-00604-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-024-00604-9