Gao Yanli, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology: Digital Twin City will become the Starting Point of Efficient Urban Governance and Operation in the Future
Tags: Smart Cities, Gao Yanli, Future City, Digital Twin

Gao Yanli, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology: Digital Twin City will become the Starting Point of Efficient Urban Governance and Operation in the Future 51WORLD Follow Feb 2 · 15 min read

Recently, the high-profile “White Paper on Digital Twin Cities (2020)” was published by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. 51WORLD participated in the compilation for the second consecutive year and became the enterprise that contributed the most application scenarios and landing cases.

As one of the main experts of the white paper, Professor Gao Yanli, the Chief Expert of Smart City of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, delivered a speech entitled “Digital Twin City Accelerating Urban Governance Innovation” at the EC4, elaborating on the construction status and development direction of digital twin city and echoing with the content of the white paper.

Professor Gao Yanli, Chief Expert of Smart City of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology

The following is the content of Professor Gao Yanli’s speech:

“The digital twin city will become the starting point of efficient urban governance and operation in the future. It is an organic combination of institutional advantages and technological advantages.”

2020 is the third year for the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology to study digital twin city. When proposing the digital twin city in 2017, we predicted that many enterprises would appear on the new track of digital twin city in the future, and some new “unicorns” would appear. The development speed of 51WORLD really further verified our prediction at that time. We really want to see such an enterprise become bigger and stronger.

The Smart City Team of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology have been engaged in the top-level design of smart city for a long time, and it is also a digital twin city proposed from the perspective of smart city. After ten years of research and development, we have made a lot of plans, and the whole development process is basically synchronized with the national information and communication policies.

In the Smart Guangzhou Project in 2010, we put forward the concept and architecture of smart city. From 2012–2014, we carried out the Smart Shekou and Smart Qianhai projects, which are of great significance to the planning system of the whole smart city. The practice of these projects also enables us to gain some theoretical accumulation in smart city.

From 2015 to 2016, the state proposed the concept of new smart city from the perspective of government digital management, and we also carried out a large number of planning for prefecture-level city. In 2017, we participated in the smart city planning of smart Xiong’an and put forward the concept of digital twin city for the first time. Since then, we have carried out smart city planning of Xixian New Area, Smart Chongqing planning, Yangtze River Delta Integration Demonstration Area planning, Smart Hainan planning and other projects. In 2020, we have carried out Shanghai smart city planning project and so on, continuously improving the theory and scheme of smart city, including this year’s new infrastructure, urban digital governance, urban brain and so on.

The concept of “digital twin city” has been highly accepted by the government and the industry. Conceptually, the concept of digital twin is easy to understand, very vivid, and spread fast. Technically, technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, mobile Internet applications is updating and developing. The transition from single-point applications to multi-point integrated applications is a new milestone and may be the starting point for human beings to enter the intelligent era. From the aspect of value, the construction of digital twin city exactly corresponds to the administrative system reform that China is promoting. Digital twin city has become an important starting point for reshaping digital gene and constructing modern urban governance system in China.

We believe that the characteristics of digital twin city are “know the world without leaving home and knowing the laws of nature without looking out the window”, they can restore the real world through technical means. Digital twin can be called another interpretation of being and nothingness. “All things work together. I will observe the restoration, do it before it happens, and govern it before chaos.” From the macro to the micro, all of them are digital twins, which can influence the world with a small scale.

At present, more than 700 cities in China are building smart city. The new model of digital twin city has pushed the smart city to a new height and become the starting point of efficient urban governance and urban operation in the future. It is an organic combination of institutional advantages and technological advantages. .

At present, there are also differences in the construction stages of smart city between eastern cities and western cities. In the eastern region, there are “three lacks and three no lacks”: no lack of lines, lack of coordination, no lack of construction, lack of operation, no lack of governance, and lack of services. This can be solved by using the digital twin city. Because the digital twin city is the carrier of collaborative governance and urban operation, and is an important part of the city brain. However, western cities are short of funds, talents, operation and maintenance, lines, data and thinking. In order to build digital twin city, we need to lay a good foundation for smart cities in the future.

From the technical architecture, we can see that digital twin city has become the inevitable choice and future direction of the new smart city evolution. Smart city architecture will be upgraded to a digital twin city architecture with deep learning ability, virtual-reality integration and intelligent iteration. The digital twin city architecture is very clear and supported by the “new infrastructure” of cloud-management-terminal integration. The lower level is the information infrastructure and integration infrastructure, the middle platform is the intelligent hub of “data + model + algorithm”, and the upper level is the super application. The digital twin city is more like a God’s perspective. It adopts one game governance and one-stop service, which is a system of super application plus application innovation.

Quoted from “White Paper on Digital Twin Cities (2020)” of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology

This solves the two traditional problems of smart city. Because the technology integration of smart city has always been an old concept of IT integration, which is the physical accumulation of software and hardware, lacking of starting point. Now, digital twin city can solve the problems of technology integration and governance coordination from the technical and business levels.

This year, the digital twin city has entered the national strategy. Before that, the digital twin city was mentioned more by our China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and industry. However, this year’s government policies, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Office of Cyberspace Affairs have incorporated digital twin, artificial intelligence and 5G technology into the policy system. Many ministries and commissions have promoted the development of relevant technologies and industries, and many digital twin urban plans have been issued by local governments. The fire of digital twin city has spread from urban areas to other industries, and also from China to foreign countries. France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries are promoting strategic layout in a high profile, they announce that they will build digital twin cities and digital twin countries. The concept of digital twin city has been put forward for nearly four years, and the concept cultivation has been basically completed. After the concept cultivation period in 2017 and 2018 and the technical scheme framework period in 2019, 2020 has officially entered the construction and implementation period. In the past two years, there have been a lot of bidding projects similar to the City Information Model (CIM) platform. This year, the bidding for the digital twin city has also started. For example, Tencent and Fiberhome won the bid for the digital twin city construction project in Wuhan.

The scale of CIM platform bidding project (100 million yuan) is quoted from the “White Paper on Digital Twin Cities (2020)” of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology

However, we also want to remind the local government that the current digital twin cities are not mature enough in the overall technical scheme, and there are still many problems that need to be studied and explored. Therefore, we need to be cautious in the implementation. Related technologies are still in the process of continuous development, and the technology of modeling and visualization is maturing, but there is a big gap in simulation, deep computing and intelligent learning.

Great changes have taken place in the industry. Previously, we divided the digital twin city industry into four camps, including surveying and mapping enterprises, BIM enterprises, modeling enterprises, traditional integrators and operators of smart city. But now more and more enterprises have entered the market from the big data and the operation. Big data enterprises, artificial intelligence enterprises, Internet enterprises, VR companies and some local surveying and mapping design institutes have gradually entered this track, and the industry camp continues to expand. Especially for big data companies, most of the current modeling companies doing digital twin have not enough exploration and accumulation at the application and data levels. If big data companies can develop and integrate from the other side, the development progress will be faster.

Quoted from “White Paper on Digital Twin Cities (2020)” of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology

After entering the field, enterprises will restructure and optimize technical solutions according to the requirements of digital twin city, and gather in the camp of digital twin city. Enterprises that have just entered the smart city industry, such as 51WORLD, have a new technology architecture. Traditional smart city enterprises form digital twin city solutions based on the deep understanding of the concept of digital twin city, as well as spatio-temporal data, artificial intelligence and video perception. Nowadays, around the theme of digital twin city, some ecological circles have been formed with large enterprises as the core and small enterprises as ecological complementation and cooperation.

This year, the state is actively promoting the upgrading of new infrastructure and urban intelligence, effectively promoting the construction of digital twin cities. The humanistic, ecological and digital development of the community, the construction of neighborhood center and smart community in the future, and the promotion of intelligent building, intelligent road and intelligent utility tunnel can greatly promote the accurate mapping of digital twin and the integration of virtual-reality, and promote the transformation of urban form to digital and intelligent.

The wave of new infrastructure has accelerated the construction of digital twin city. We believe that the city will form five ubiquitous overall patterns in the future: ubiquitous identity, ubiquitous perception, ubiquitous connection, ubiquitous computing and ubiquitous intelligent facilities. Based on this, the future new infrastructure will also be open to the entire society and provide empowerment for various industries. The extensive deployment of new infrastructure not only increases the computing power and enriches the algorithm, but also reduces the cost and shortens the path for the construction of digital twin city.

Digital twin plays an important role in urban governance and promotes the innovation of governance system. We can see that the biggest feature of digital twin cities is the accurate grasp of the whole city dynamics and the comprehensive collection of data. In particular, under the epidemic prevention and control this year, the demand for the construction of digital twin cities is more urgent. It is necessary to form the ability of prevention and control normalization, including epidemic deduction, spreading simulation, personnel positioning, path tracking, bad behavior identification, as well as the monitoring of checkpoint, the allocation of emergency materials, the dispatching of social resources, and the guarantee of living materials.

At the same time, affected by the epidemic, many services are transferred to online. We think that public services in the virtual scene of digital twin city are also the general direction in the future. Hospitals and schools will be application scenarios in the future.

In addition, digital twin also empowers many industries, such as transportation, energy and water conservancy, and empowers many fields, such as IOT perception, total factor expression, visual presentation, spatial computing, simulation and so on.

▲Total factor scene layer presentation is quoted from “White Paper on Digital Twin Cities (2020)” of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology

▲Cases simulation deduction is quoted from “White Paper on Digital Twin Cities (2020)” of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology

Digital twin technology provides great inspiration for thousands of industries and broadens everyone’s thinking through the digital twin city in the urban field. Digital twin technology also extends to various industries. For example, the digital twin factory is the twin in the production and manufacturing of precision instruments and machine tools; in the medical field, the digital twin human body has a great impact on the future medical system, especially on the surgery and rehabilitation system; in education, there are digital twin classrooms; as well as digital twin shopping malls, digital twin scenic spots, digital twin parks, digital twin fire drills, etc. All industries are twinning with each other.

The empowerment of digital twin for the industry is mainly reflected in changing the industry rules and optimizing the development path. However, due to the influence of digital twin technology, some original applications, systems and rules need to be changed. For example, in the medical field, the original service system, surgery system and medical rehabilitation system of the hospital need to be adjusted according to the situation.

Its industry rules, development path and operation mode have changed from gradual to subversive, which is quite different from the original. It provides a new digital idea and new perspective for the industry, opens a convenient door, greatly shortens the development path of industry informatization, and brings subversive innovation. The innovation in technology has led to profound changes in the system, mechanism and structural rules within the industry, which are very powerful.

Now many places claim that they are building digital twin city. What capabilities does digital twin city need? We have sorted out nine core competencies, which correspond to the modernization of urban governance.

This year’s epidemic has also triggered our reflection on urban governance. At the beginning of the epidemic, everyone was frantic. The government has a lot of resources and great power. It has resources but lacks dispatch; it has data but lacks analysis; it has manpower but lacks organization; it has network but lacks efficiency, which affects the whole society. But in the subsequent adjustment, we used technical means to launch big data, travel code, health code and so on, the dispatch and management went smoothly.

We can see that the digital twin city outputs nine capabilities through this technical architecture, which are: IOT perception and control capability, visual presentation capability, total factor digital expression capability, data fusion and supply capability, virtual-reality integration interaction capability, spatial analysis and computing capability, simulation deduction capability, self-learning and self-optimization capability, and innovation and expansion application capability. These are reflected in the “White Paper on Digital Twin Cities (2020)”.

Quoted from “White Paper on Digital Twin Cities (2020)” of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology

This year, in addition to the white paper, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology will publish a series of typical cases of digital twin city. The typical application scenarios and project practices of digital twin city mainly focus on four categories: urban and regional governance scenarios, such as digital twin park and community mechanized management; natural environment simulation scenarios, such as flood control, weather, landslide and other natural disaster simulation; industrial production process scenarios, such as twin factory, twin port and other production processes; emergency security deduction scenarios, such as fire drill simulation. This year, we will shift our focus from concept and technical architecture to application, and use applications to drive technology maturity continuously.

▲Urban and Regional Governance: Digital Twin Community Management

▲Industrial Production Process: Real-time Display of Port Operation

Of course, many problems are exposed when accelerating the process of digital twin city construction. We have summed up four aspects.

The first is the problem of one-sided understanding and insufficient application depth of enterprises. We now find that the threshold of visualization is relatively low, and enterprises can do visualization well through open-source software. However, if we excessively pursue the effect of visualization, we will only achieve the surface visualization, lack of deep visualization such as business logic and social relations. This problem needs to be paid great attention by enterprises. In addition to appearance display, business logic and visualization of urban complexity need to be considered. Some enterprises have one-sided understanding of the digital twin city, and the level is not deep enough, so the actual operation will be divorced from reality, the construction will be blindly carried out, and the demand can not be solved.

The second is the integration of urban base map. When we are carrying out the digital twin city project, the first difficulty we encounter is that a city has multiple base maps: natural resources and land planning, urban management of housing and construction departments, and administrative lines of public security, politics and law. These three maps are parallel and self-established , so it is difficult to make a choice. Therefore, higher level departments need to lead the integration, such as the newly established big data department. However, the big data department has not been established for a long time and lacks experience. it will take a period of time to try and explore how to promote it.

The third is the lack of standards. At present, the digital twin city lacks a unified spatio-temporal framework and data standards, and there are no standards for spatial coding and business data, which restricts the role of the digital twin city. In the future, the digital twin city research will focus on standards, and make it an important driver of industrial development. At present, enterprises have formulated some standards, but it is also feasible if they can become bigger and stronger and become the de facto standards.

The fourth is the risk of technical barriers in key technologies. Digital twin technology integrates many technology categories, including core technology, software and hardware, and operating system. However, China’s current level of autonomy is insufficient, and there are still differences with foreign countries. GPU technology is controlled by others, and its localization ability is very low. Most of the foreign open-source software currently used also has the risk of being restricted, and this risk will increase especially after the Sino-US trade war. In addition, the development of domestic enterprises is still lack of original innovation. Although they are developing rapidly on the surface, they still have unstable foundations. I hope 51WORLD can continue to increase R & D investment and carry out original innovation, so as to go further in this new track.

At present, the digital twin city is still in its initial stage, which needs to be promoted by all sectors of industry, university and research. First of all, we need to make clear the direction, build a unified digital base, strengthen the top-level design, coordinate the organization system, closely combine the urban governance scenarios with the business needs, and promote the project construction in a unified way; second, we need to expand the breadth and depth, start from a small scope, and gradually expand the twin scope, mapping accuracy and application depth; in addition, we need to establish the data standard system of total factor expression, unify the city information standard, data format, model data and Internet of things data to ensure the consistency and compatibility of standards between applications. Finally, we need to strengthen ecological cooperation, strengthen independent innovation, and form a situation of concerted efforts to tackle key problems through the establishment of mechanisms and measures in technology, market and operation.

In the process of building a smart city, digital city is the first step. Our first step is digitization, then intellectualization, then achieve smart, and finally build a digital twin city. At present, we are still in the digital stage of this system, the concept of digital twin city is still relatively advanced, there are double challenges of technology and mechanism, and the construction of digital twin city has a long way to go. Therefore, we also put forward some development suggestions.

In the research and development of basic theories and technical solutions, we need to deeply study basic theories, explore technical solutions, demonstrate application scenarios, and actively break through mechanism specifications, so as to truly achieve the ideal precise mapping, twin parallel, and virtual service reality. We need to work with the industry to push forward pragmatically. We should not be over-eager.

Secondly, we need to vigorously promote the construction and coordination of industrial ecology. Digital twin is a huge project of intelligence integration, such as knowledge integration, technology integration, data integration, algorithm integration, tool integration and application integration. It must be supported by a strong industrial ecology and closely cooperated. At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen the intensive layout of new infrastructure, especially the layout scheme of urban Internet of Things. At present, there are invisible social relations between urban elements, ambiguity and uncertainty of urban operation rules, which are insurmountable barriers for digital twin cities, and also problems we need to solve in the future.

In addition, the government needs to actively open data and related resources, promote enterprises to do applications, and strengthen the verification and promotion of the scheme. It is necessary for the government to change the mechanism, establish a management framework to adapt to the digital twin city, adjust the urban governance structure and governance rules, and promote the modernization of urban governance.

In the new track of digit twin city, if enterprises do not pay attention to R & D investment, are not willing to deeply cultivate technological innovation, and are not willing to seek cooperation, it is difficult to achieve success. For the government, the digital twin city is to provide services, not to control people. The government needs to take serving the masses as its original intention and purpose. Only by putting people first and serving the people, and aiming at improving the happiness of the people, can the digital twin city make steady progress and win the future.