Surveillance Camera Applications with the Urban Digital Twin
With populations expanding along with the dire need to maximize the efficient use of urban space, urban digital twins act as a crucial simulation to enhance decision making and resource management in cities. Creating resilient urban systems through optimizing transportation systems and public life will be bolstered with such application.
What is the Urban Digital Twin?
An Urban Digital Twin is the representation of the physical features of a city visualized in a virtual space. Beyond providing a 3D structure of an urban space, a digital twin incorporates advanced technologies to collect meaningful data that can be transferred into useful information. There are three crucial layers that must be incorporated when creating a comprehensive digital twin which include the digital, connected, and intelligent components. The digital component of the urban digital twin simply involves the physical layout of an urban space digitizing key features using positioning technology. In others words, this aspect represents the features that we can see in real-life including buildings, trees and roads. The connected aspect of the framework involves leveraging the internet of things (IoT) which are devices that collect data in real-time to create an interconnected live system. Surveillance cameras are an example of an IoT device where images of locations and sounds detected in that location are collected in real-time. The intelligent aspect of the urban digital twin involves combining the physical and connected nature of the city where analytics and simulations can be conducted to harvest useful insights to the nature of an urban space. In modern times, the use of AI has been exponentially increasing as a commonly used intelligent aspect of an Urban Digital Twin.
Urban Digital Twin and Surveillance Cameras
The idea of creating an Urban Digital Twin can be leveraged to improve the basic functions occurring within a city by understanding the link between human interaction with physical space. There are several valuable insights that can be gained from collecting real-time data from IoT to assist with decision-making and spatial planning. In particular, the use of surveillance cameras and their connection to the context of the physical world presents a wide array of applications we can discover to optimize daily life in an urban space.
Consumer Behaviour
Surveillance cameras integrated in the Urban Digital Twin can provide location-based services to assess consumer behaviour in relation to how they interact with business services. The business services referred to in this context include restaurants, shops, stores, or any establishment that sells goods. By tracking outward human behaviour, data can be collected on specific human attributes as they pass by certain establishments. Customer age, gender, race, behaviour and physical appearance can be captured and linked to real-world locations. An understanding of customers with similar sets of attributes that pass by locations that sell business services can be crucial to determine target audiences. This will allow businesses to market their services tailored to the specific demographic that pass by or enter their real estate most frequently. Urban planners and business managers will be able to locate specific services to align with the customer demographics of an area.
Pedestrian Comfort
Pedestrian comfort in high traffic walking areas can also benefit from the integration of surveillance cameras in an urban digital context. The detection of human-motion in urban areas where there is plenty of activity can be used to determine comfort levels of people and determine areas that are apt for large concentrations of pedestrian flow. Through the analysis of body language and motion, real-time cameras can provide useful information as to if specific areas at certain densities of people encourage pedestrian flow or not. This can be used and integrated into navigation services such as Google Maps to display optimal areas to walk in for commuting. Urban designers will be able to manipulate existing zones to improve pedestrian experience and improve areas that work efficiently.
Robot Delivery Services
Robot delivery services have also been utilized as a key area of study with the use of surveillance camera sensors where real-time measurements of robots can be track
ed in order to determine routes of least resistance. By discovering the route of least resistance through the analysis of physical obstacles, the quickest possible paths for robot-delivery services can be synthesized. The benefits of discovering optimal paths for delivery include increased revenue for services such as Uber Eats.
Overall, the Urban Digital Twin has the capacity to integrate IoT sensors such as surveillance cameras to gather data on real world components. Consumer Behaviour, Pedestrian Comfort and Robot-Delivery Services and how they interact with the physical world can all be understood to improve urban functions.
References
Hassan, A. (2023, October). Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation of Sidewalk Delivery Robots’ Interaction with Pedestrians. York University. https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/items/15938947-bd0b-4eda-b82c-4237686a6b0f
Hassan, A. (2023, October). Pedestrian Comfort Analysis Visualization on York University Keele Campus [Photograph]. York University. https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/items/15938947-bd0b-4eda-b82c-4237686a6b0f
Hassan, A. (2023, October). Robot-Delivery Services Visualization on York University Keele Campus [Photograph]. York University. https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/items/15938947-bd0b-4eda-b82c-4237686a6b0f
Leete, R.I. (2022, January 22). The City as a Digital Twin [Photograph]. Arch Daily. https://www.archdaily.com/975256/what-is-a-digital-twin
Leete, R.I. (2022, January 22). What is a Digital Twin? Arch Daily. https://www.archdaily.com/975256/what-is-a-digital-twin
