Dynamic doppelganger: Developing Florida’s Digital Twin

Visualizing a virtual Jacksonville

One way that users will be able to interact with the Jacksonville digital twin is through an augmented reality headset. Residents and urban planners will be able to see rich information about their neighborhood in front of them, allowing for an immersive experience unlike screen displays. The research team is now working to enable the AR headset to display the simulated effects of flooding. The information that is revealed from this visualized simulation of the real-life physical environment can help city planners develop more cost-effective, efficient, and sustainable long-term infrastructures.

Karla Saldaña Ochoa, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida and director of Spatial Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Research and Experimentation Lab, a research group centered on developing projects leveraging interactions between AI and human intelligence to boost creativity in architectural design. Saldaña Ochoa wants to have a greater understanding of what is happening to Florida’s environment while making digital twin technology accessible to users from academia, industries, decision makers, and the community.

“We have access to one of the fastest supercomputers in the United States, which can host all the multi-model data needed to create a digital twin, such as water simulation, a 3D built environment, and health data. We want to find a way to visualize data from the web interface into Omniverse using the AR goggles: an augmented reality experience,” said Saldaña Ochoa when describing the AR aspect of the project.

In addition to the AR perspective of the Jacksonville digital twin, other UF researchers are working to scale the city down into a series of 3D neighborhoods to be added to a web-faced interface.

Building an interface of Jacksonville’s neighborhoods while trying to adapt to climate change was the perfect challenge for Jeff Carney, an associate professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida and director of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience. Carney’s experience researching the role of architecture and city planning in building resilience aligns with the Jacksonville digital twin’s ability to assess flood risks and measure future impacts.

“There’s the impact of storms and floodwater on the buildings and streets today, but what will the impact of the flood look like in six months? What’s the impact on the health of the residents two, three, or five months after a storm? I think some of those questions will be interesting to explore with the digital twin,” said Carney, describing how researchers can use their findings to help Floridians.

“When a patient comes in for surgery, they can visit the space ahead of time,” Bihorac said. “They can go through the operating room and see where they’ll be residing after their surgery. They can even interact with an AI agent as proxies of our doctors and nurses.” Creating virtual experiences aims to minimize stress and anxiety associated with some health care experiences.

Developing a digital twin model for an intensive care unit is a critical step toward realizing the potential for virtual medical experiences. By creating a virtual replica of an ICU, researchers can gain deep insights into patients’ needs and preferences. This allows for rigorous testing and refinement of care scenarios in a simulated environment before they are introduced in real-life settings, with a goal of ensuring a higher level of preparedness and patient care.

With high mortality rates, life-or-death situations can come down to a matter of seconds. With such a small margin for error, an ICU digital twin provides a virtual environment where groundbreaking AI research can be crucial to not only progressing patient care but also to saving lives.