Digital Twins for Virtual Cities

An approach I had not seen, but we had used a simplistic SimCity like model for thinking about interaction in groups.

 Cities Using Digital Twins Like SimCity for Policymakers

Bloomberg CityLab, Linda Poon, April 5, 2022

Cities like Orlando, FL, and Singapore are using digital twins to generate virtual models of themselves, in order to simulate the effects of potential new policies or infrastructure projects that can inform real-world decision-making. For example, the Orlando Economic Partnership and gaming company Unity have developed a three-dimensional (3D) model of the region that the city can show to potential investors as it attempts to expand as a technology hub. Meanwhile, the Virtual Singapore model incorporates over 3 million street-level and 160,000 aerial images, plus billions of 3D data points, exceeding 100 terabytes of raw data. Singapore Land Authority's Victor Khoo said the model differentiates between individual elements, making it easier to test its responses to different conditions in various simulations.  ... '

Driverless Cars Building Virtual Cities

Virtual city models developed from car imaging to create  tests, training from virtual models. 

Google, Waymo Used Driverless Cars to Make Virtual San Francisco

By New Scientist, February 24, 2022

Researchers at driverless car company Waymo and Google Research used self-driving vehicles to create a virtual model of San Francisco from photos processed by Block-NeRF software.

The software is based on Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs), a tool that builds three-dimensional (3D) models of small objects from a collection of stills that are viewable from all angles, even those that have no existing photos.

The method uses artificial intelligence trained to generate accurate 3D models from large image sets, which includes data on the exact location from which each image was captured.

Block-NeRF weaves together models of city blocks photographed by the driverless cars to keep the size of the overall model sufficiently small to run on modest hardware ...

Block-NeRF, created by researchers at driverless car company Waymo and Google Research, uses vast numbers of photos taken by cameras mounted atop Waymo’s autonomous cars to build small 3D models, each covering just over one city block. These models... 

From New Scientist   View Full Article