D2EcoSys: Decentralized Digital Twin EcoSystem Empower Co-Creation City-level Digital Twins

A city-level digital twin is a critical enabling technology to construct a smart city that helps improve citizens' living conditions and quality of life. Currently, research and development regarding the digital replica city are pursued worldwide. However, many research projects only focus on creating the 3D city model. A mechanism to involve key players, such as data providers, service providers, and application developers, is essential for constructing the digital replica city and producing various city applications. Based on this motivation, the authors of this paper are pursuing a research project, namely Decentralized Digital Twin EcoSystem (D2EcoSys), to create an ecosystem to advance (and self-grow) the digital replica city regarding time and space directions, city services, and values. This paper introduces an overview of the D2EcoSys project: vision, problem statement, and approach. In addition, the paper discusses the recent research results regarding networking technologies and demonstrates an early testbed built in the Kashiwa-no-ha smart city.