PRR Project

Summary

The proposed position aims to leverage the strong research track that IST, through its Environment and Energy scientific area at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, in partnership with LARSyS, in the design of Urban Digital Twins as a new way of accelerating urban climate neutrality, as introduced by the EU Mission Board on Climate Neutral and Smart Cities.This position will be critical to consolidate the leadership of IST in Urban Digital Twins (UDT), by integrating existing capacity in the building sector transformation with emerging transitions in urban mobility, and the renewables-based energy communities. The scientific advancements to be promoted should contribute to the reformation of the energy sector towards a decentralized, decarbonized and consumer-centric service-oriented operational mode, empowered by the digitalization of all aspects of network operations and business processes. As the share of intermittent and decentralized resources for local energy generation increases, the need for a paradigm shifts towards a market where consumption follows production becomes clearer. UDTs of the household energy consumers to be developed will embody all additional features that mark a leap forward from what is now considered state-of-the-art in energy digitalization at household level: interoperability, high level of interaction with the users, access to a wide set of data beyond purely energy data and capability for predictive analytics and speculative execution (simulation) of scenarios in a virtual representation of the actual household, including mobility services. It is envisioned that UDT-based applications will be the catalyst for the holistic upgrade of existing services and the pathway for new cross-sectoral services benefiting end users, public and private actors.To realize the full potential of UDTs and turn their rich opportunities for new services into reality, there are a number of challenges that need to be overcome, and to which this researcher should contribute. First of all, the driving force of DTs is data associated with users’ activities. Unless household occupants are convinced to actively engage with DTs, the availability of data cannot be taken for granted. For this to happen, it is necessary, though not sufficient, to devise proper secure methods for private and sensitive data acquisition and sharing. Secondly, there are technological challenges of DT deployment mainly associated with the modelling of a) the resources and processes needed for buildings’ design and construction, b) the surrounding natural and physical environment, c) the coupled systems and their components, d) occupancy and e) the overall dynamic and non-linear interactions of buildings with users and the environment.A main challenge to be addressed in the advancement of the state-of-the-art in UDTs is to promote the articulation between buildings with mobility. The implementation of the UDTs will require virtual modeling, sensor network integration, data analytics, and a stakeholder layer. The implementation of this UDT concept may require new processes, methods, and novel platforms to interact with each of these modules. This opens the opportunity for  UDTs  to capture the complex-and-dynamic relationships of different components at neighborhood level, which allows new levels of analysis of complex environments. This will promote a better understanding on how inhabitants change their mobility behavior in response to the increase of EV numbers, the impact of distributed PV installation on local network and storage systems, as well as local electricity market via different business models.This will clearly harness new capacities in this field offered through data science, machine learning, and massive remote and proximal sensing, benefiting from the overall research environment in these fields provided by LARSyS. The prospective employee should be capable of harnessing the capacities, develop new tools and methods and apply them in real world situations, in collaboration with private sector and public administration actors, including a contribution to the development and evaluation of public policies.Talented researchers have been previously identified through a systematic scouting process and will also be ensured through the wide dissemination of the call for the position.