Architecting Digital Twin for Smart City Systems: A Case Study

Urbanization, driven by technological advancements, has brought about improved connectivity and efficiency, especially with the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Smart cities use these innovations to manage resources better and enhance resident's quality of life. However, implementing smart city initiatives comes with challenges like monitoring, maintaining, and testing urban infrastructure. Digital Twin (DT) entails the connection of physical facilities or devices with their digital counterparts, facilitating real-time monitoring, manipulation, and predictive analysis of their behavior. This concept offers a virtual replica of assets, processes, and systems, enabling insights into their real-time performance and predictive behaviors. By simulating real-world scenarios, DT aids in planning maintenance activities and conducting comprehensive testing, thereby enhancing the resilience and efficiency of smart city systems. Particularly in the context of managing water networks, DT technology holds significant promise. Visualization capabilities provide intuitive insights into the system's behavior, facilitating informed decision-making. This visualization, coupled with actuation capabilities, enables control actions based on predictive analytics and optimization algorithms, allowing for proactive management of water resources and infrastructure. To this end, in this paper, we present the architecture of WaterTwin, a DT developed for water quality networks in smart city systems. We demonstrate our approach through the use of a water quality network at the smart city living lab, IIIT Hyderabad campus.