A Digital Urban Twin Enabling Interactive Pollution Predictions and Enhanced Planning

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2502.13746
• Publication Date: 2025-02-19
• Authors: Dennis Teutscher; Fedor Bukreev; Adrian Kummerlaender; Stephan Simonis; Peter Baechler; Ashkan Rezaee; Mariusz Hermansdo...; Mathias J. Krause
• Keywords: Physics - Physics and Society; Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn); FOS: Physical sciences; Physics - Fluid Dynamics; Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph)

Digital twin (DT) technology is increasingly used in urban planning, leveraging real-time data integration for environmental monitoring. This paper presents an urban-focused DT that combines computational fluid dynamics simulations with live meteorological to analyze pollution dispersion. Addressing the health impacts of pollutants like particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide, provides updates on air quality, wind speed, direction. Using OpenStreetMaps XML-based data, model distinguishes between porous elements trees solid structures, enhancing flow analysis. The framework employs lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) within open-source software OpenLB simulate transport. Nitrogen dioxide concentrations are estimated based traffic building emissions, enabling hot-spot identification. was from November 7 23, 2024, hourly updates, capturing trends influenced by patterns. Results show alternating east-west winds during this period create a dynamic distribution, identifying critical residential exposure areas. work contributes novel integrates OpenStreetMap-based geometry, high-fidelity LBM modeling. Unlike existing DTs, which focus structural monitoring or large-scale factors, approach enables fine-grained, analyses airflow By allowing interactive modifications geometry continuous serves as powerful tool adaptive supporting evidence-based policy making improve quality public health.