Workshop on Atmospheric and Urban Digital Twins (AUDT); Austin, Texas

This award is for a series of workshop activities that would result in the development of a white paper on the potential applications of combining atmospheric and urban digital twins in urban environments. Digital twins are virtual representations of physical objects, processes, and systems and have gained widespread use in the engineering community, and are currently being adopted in the atmospheric sciences community. The impact of the workshop series would be to engage the academic research community in the use of digital twins for enhancing understanding of interactions between natural, physical, cyber, and social systems within cities. The leadership team will conduct a series of focused group meetings, invited talks, virtual meetings, and a session at a major conference over the course of a year that will result in the development of a white paper on the potential applications of combining atmospheric and urban digital twins in urban environments. Atmospheric digital twins (ADTs) are digital clones of the Earth’s atmosphere while Urban digital twins (UDTs) are digital replicas of urban spaces. The integration of ADTs and UDTs into an atmospheric and urban digital twin (AUDT) would result in real-time virtual representations of physical, environmental, and social systems by providing 3D (three-dimensional) visualization, AR (augmented reality), virtual city models, and prediction capabilities. The objectives of the workshop are to develop clear definitions and requirements of AUDT, develop exemplary AUDT demonstrators, and support in channeling the different digital twin developments for weather and climate studies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.