– DRAFT –
Web-based Digital Twins for Smart Cities

Introduction

Kaz: thank you for coming
… team contact for smart cities ig

Kaz: Michael Koster is chair of that IG
… would like people here to self-introduce

Koster: chair of smart city IG, also co-chair of WoT

masaki: IEC

atkinson: SDW IG co-chair, OGC

kasuya: from DADC

ege: WoT TD TF lead

satakagi: ...

Hirakawa: roles in ITC, vmedia chair

matsuda: ECHONET

mizushima: WoT Use Case TF

endo: NHK

takami: KADOKAWA ?

shiohama: media gu, publishing BG

wilson: Google

History of smart cities activities in W3C

Slides

Kaz: had workshop three years ago, then two followup discussions at TPAC
… then updated a proposed IG charter
… then IG has launched
… now are discussing existing standards
… and cross-cutting issues
… and also input from SDOs on various topics, smart building standards
… SDOs including ECHONET, ISO, ITU-T, IEC, OGC (geolocation)
… W3C has been looking at related standard, e.g. WoT
… but have identified some missing points
… guidelines for engineering, data governance, etc.

Kaz: identified digital twin as a key concept

Discussion

Kaz: would like to consider using WoT, DID, and other W3C standards, such as VC, for Smart Cities applications
… also would be good to have standardized vocabulary, e.g. based on RDF
… use the W3C as a hub for collaboration

Kaz: expected deliverables
… survey of existing technologies, document on best practices, identify gaps
… also got input during review, such as working with US Ignite, ERIA, Digital City nation, etc. - basically regional organizations
… and we should also consider potential harms to security, privacy, and user agency

Kaz: would like to first ask for comments, then as SDOs for updates

Ken: from NTT. understand you are focused on digital twin, but would like to understand some more specific use case cases

Kaz: digital twin is a tools

<Rob-OGC> Hi - I provided some updates from OGC here https://github.com/w3c/smartcities-workshop/issues/27

Kaz: but can narrow to smart buildings, smart home, smart village

McCool: lots of use cases already in WoT, but we should consider more, for example smart grid, accessibility, distributed grid, etc.

McCool: but part of the deliverables should probably be a discussion of what use cases are most important

Koster: thing we need to understand what problems are are solving, user stories
… can also includes transportation

satakagi: disaster prevention and mitigation

ra: in the chat where I put a link to a number of activities in the OGC, and will also be discussing a number of things in the SDW tomorrow
… two things of interest: development of ontologies for GML;

ra: no official status until a working group adopt them

ra: second thing is mapping JSON schemas to ontologies
… opportunities around JSON-LD enablement

McCool: some clarification on why we added "digital twins"
… would narrow the scope
… need to handle spatial model
… also need to handle transportation within the city
… all possible smart cities varies
… so added "digital twins" for the target of the Smart Cities IG
… on the other hand, WoT works on IoT in general
… another thing is digitalization of smart cities

<Rob-OGC> thats the driver for the CityGML -> OWL to support planning rule assessment..

Kaz: anthing else to add from SDW viewpoint?

joshua: add note in chat
… these days not so much getting a digital twin as having too many of them
… so there is also the aspect of how to "use" the model, it should look and behave the same, but can also be used for "what if" questions
… but most do have an essential spatial aspect
… including distance in space and time

<kaz> Josh's message on the Zoom chat:

<kaz> There are indeed any number of use cases distinguished by function, domain, scale, etc. The present challenge is more to enable digital twin solutions by uncovering the commonalities and interchanges that enable possibly myriad DT’s to be sustained.

joshua: these are tied to aspects of urban life
… we also tend to think of them as twins of the physical world, but there is also the element of people - there is a "social" part
… started working on digital twins 10 years ago; thought smart city was a temporary term - all cities would be smart
… it would just be standard practice
… it would just be the city

Kaz: any updates from ECHONET
… interested for example about smart grid?

matsuda: yes, ECHONET has been looking at demand-response
… but mostly focused on communication protocols, but not on energy management in particular

McCool: any aspect of what you're working on that relates to digital twins

matsuda: not directly
… but can deal with properties of a thing

McCool: another implication of "digital twins" is "digital shadow"
… querying offline
… for maintenance purposes
… may or may not have capability of identifying the devices are
… might be just a cache

McCool: we have also argued about whether digital shadows are "digital twins" or just caches

Hirakawa: updates on ontologies
… IE
… IEC has established an advisory commitee on digital content management
… based on CDD structure
… ACBCD
… first meeting Oct 3
… not directly relevant to digital twin, but relates to background infrastucture, but to content standard
… hoping that in future, will reach ISO standard
… also on IEC, made desicion in june not to establish new cmtes for smart cities
… instead have a joint ad-hoc group with SMD

<kaz> (joint work with JTC1 on Smart Cities)

Hirakawa: new subcommitee SMD-TMB joint for smart home
… including transition plan from existing ISO activities
… for CDD infrastructure

umejima: in charge of dev plan for smart energy
… will publish and ontology 63017
… can make a good tie between W3C and smart energy
… regarding digital twins, are part of energy plan
… will be generating a data model and interface design
… definition of digital twin in quite big; after collecting use cases should identify data models

Kaz: formal definition of digital twins from ITU

umejima: yes, but there is a gap between definition

kasuya: working on smart buildings in japan
… have developed a working group to study data models to build digital twins for buildings
… to support BIM, building information models
… working closely with W3C
… specific use cases such as demand response

satakagi: machine readability models needed
… but can extract information from big data using analytics

<Zakim> hiroki_endo, you wanted to talk about expectations from Media Content Metadata Japanese CG

endo: from media content metadata group
… seek to improve interoperability of data across industries
… for metadata in particular
… studying use cases to understand metadata requirements

Koster: as some final comments, seems there is a lot to contribute, I think we should start a cadence of regular meetings, and see if we can better define and narrow the scope of what we have to deliver
… let's set up some follow up

Kaz: IG will organize a monthly call, and will seek to gather use cases and requirements
… please continue to collaborate with us

[adjourned]