Who should own urban digital twins?
More and more cities are developing digital twins of their crucial public infrastructures. The data and data models that are needed to build digital twins are forecast to take on more and more relevance in how cities are run and developed. Many twinning projects involve multiple stakeholders in their design but our discussions about how we should govern digital urban twins going forward demand more critical engagement. Starting from the simple question of who should own urban digital twins, this project will explore and evaluate different options for governing urban digital twins. This project would also offer the opportunity to map current debates around the ethics of urban digital twinning.
The primary objectives of projects in this theme should be to:
- Acquire the ability to critically evaluate geo-data technologies and their social implications
- Contribute to an emerging field of research on critical data studies and migration through specific case studies
- Develop and apply social science research skills and (if appropriate) link those with specific GIS skills (e.g., mapping dataflows or actors to explain current migration information infrastructures).
As this theme allows for different research questions, the methodological approach of the specific project of a student will depend on the precise project question that the student develops during proposal writing. Mixed method approaches are encouraged, especially the creative use of spatial technologies and spatial data in the process of research as well as innovative social science methodologies such as network analytic approaches. It is likely that the analysis of textual data sources (e.g., policy documents, newspaper articles, expert interviews) will be appropriate.
Lehtola, Ville V.; Koeva, Mila; Elberink, Sander Oude; Raposo, Paulo; Virtanen, Juho-Pekka; Vahdatikhaki, Faridaddin; Borsci, Simone (2022): Digital twin of a city. Review of technology serving city needs. In International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 114 (01), p. 102915. DOI: 10.1016/j.jag.2022.102915.
Tzachor, Asaf; Sabri, Soheil; Richards, Catherine E.; Rajabifard, Abbas; Acuto, Michele (2022): Potential and limitations of digital twins to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. In Nat Sustain 5 (10), pp. 822–829. DOI: 10.1038/s41893-022-00923-7.
Mittelstadt, Brent Daniel; Allo, Patrick; Taddeo, Mariarosaria; Wachter, Sandra; Floridi, Luciano (2016): The ethics of algorithms. Mapping the debate. In Big Data & Society 3 (2), 205395171667967. DOI: 10.1177/2053951716679679.
The use of urban digital twins increasingly shapes how urban governance is done. This creates wicked problems as new socio-technical entanglements are often insufficiently understood. By choosing this topic, you can critically explore the link between urban governance and remote sensing applications - questioning the values and priorities that go into solving wicked problems. To take this kind of viewpoint, you will need to be able to read across disciplines and enjoy critically questioning the why and where to of novel geospatial technologies.