Do You Have a Digital Twin?

Professor Deborah Bunker,
Group Leader

Greetings from the Spatial Futures Forum  on Intelligent Cities and Transport hosted by Communications and Technology for Society Research Group* at University of Sydney. If nothing else this has been useful to find out what a "Digital Twin" is. I kept reading this term in LinkedIn discussions. It turns out this is a new term for digital models of real world objects. In this case it is referring to models of cities, including mapping data, roads, and buildings. The models can be used for planning, and operations.

* They used to be the Interoperability for Extreme Events Research Group (IEERG)., but pivoted.  


9:30am Welcome (and Housekeeping) – Professor Deborah Bunker (University of Sydney) Intelligent Cities and Transport: What Are the Issues?
9:45am Mr Bruce Thompson - Executive Director, NSW Spatial Services Division
KEYNOTE: Spatial Digital Twin: The New Digital Workbench for Intelligent Cities and Transport
10:30am Morning Tea
11:00am Professor Sisi Zlatanova - Built Environment (UNSW)
Digital Twin: Challenges and Opportunities.
11:40am Professor Christopher Pettit - City Futures Research Centre (City Analytics Lab UNSW) Value Australia - Sharpening Our Land and Property Decisions with Artificial Intelligence
12:20pm Professor Linlin Ge & Mr Peter Mumford - Geoscience and Earth Observing Systems Group (UNSW) New Directions in Smart Parking
1:00pm Lunch
2:00pm Professor Michiel Bliemer - Chair in Transport and Logistics Network Modelling ITLS (University of Sydney) Future Transport: Technology-led or Technology-fed?
2:40pm Mr Yale Wong – Research Associate in Integrated Mobility Services and Contractual Structures, ITLS (University of Sydney) Mobility as a Service (MaaS): Rationale, Governance, Trials
3:20pm Afternoon Tea
3:40pm Mr Shane Conserdyne & Mr Nathaniel Bavinton – City of Newcastle
Recent developments in Newcastle’s Digital Twin and Smart City Initiatives
4:20pm Panel & Wrap Up Chair - Adjunct Associate Professor Tony Sleigh (University of Sydney)
5pm Networking
 

Mental Models for Decision Making

Greetings from the Systems Modelling Conference at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra. The keynote is by Associate Professor Shayne Gary, UNSW on Mental Models and Dynamic Decision Making. In several training courses I have been encouraged to draw a mental model and even shown software to help with the drawing. However, there was never any rigor to this process, nor theory behind it, just "draw something", so I dismissed this as trivial. However, Professor Gary is pointing out there is research into how these models help people understand a complex problem.But mental models can be misleading.

References

Gary, M. S., Yang, M. M., Yetton, P. W., & Sterman, J. D. (2017). Stretch Goals and the Distribution of Organizational Performance. Organization Science. URL https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1131
Gary, M. S., Prietula, M. J., & Feltovich, P. (2017, January). Mental Models as the Interface between the Business Environment and Strategic Decisions. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2017, No. 1, p. 14588). Academy of Management. doi:10.5465/AMBPP.2017.14588abstract