Way Beyond Agent-Based Modeling - The Human Centered Digital Twin For Smart Cities

EllisCities helps existing cities become Smart Cities by leveraging human centered digital twins and urban design to create future forward “living masterplans.”

Drawing from my experience pushing the boundaries of technology and leading teams-of-teams to design sustainable cities globally, I formed EllisCities to help civic leaders better understand risk, create targeted policy and achieve climate resiliency.

From this company I built two related projects: The Human Centered Digital Twin Architecture for Smart Cities; and the Burnham & Bennett 2100 Digital Plan for Chicago, which would make use of the digital twin to plan a climate resilient future for Cook County, Illinois.

In 2022, I formed a partnership with WSP USA and RunWithIt Synthetics Inc. to create the team that could build Human Centered Twins for civic clients. We pursued the Cook County Digital Twin together, with each partner contributing world-class expertise to the capabilities of the Resilient Urban Futures Regional Team.

The following architecture for Smart City models is the result of this partnership and represents our proposal for the ideal urban digital twin architecture, including:

Strategic Design leadership by a digital twin architect & resilient urban futures team who can guide the project vision, digital twin customization and drive plan and policy testing towards effective outcomes throughout the project lifecycle.

AECO leadership in digital twin engineering for the built environment, smart infrastructure, planning, design & operations to move rapidly from simulation to building real-world solutions.

A simulated human population and AI-powered scenario testing platform, incorporating social, economic, environmental and behavioral factors to take a complete approach to planning and future-proofing. In other words, instead of modeling cars, the HCDT simulates drivers.

This project was promoted in an article by Forbes.