What Have Urban Digital Twins Contributed to Urban Planning and Decision Making? From a Systematic Literature Review Toward a Socio-Technical Research and Development Agenda

Abstract

Highlights: What are the main findings? The large gap between ambitions of Urban Digital Twins (UDTs) and their realized contributions is due to the lack of addressing socio-technical complexities. There is a shift in academic literature toward a socio-technical understanding of UDTs. What are the implications of the main findings? A socio-technical research and development agenda is proposed to bridge this gap: Augmented Urban Planning (AUP). It is necessary to consolidate a socio-technical methdology for development and use of UDTs within urban planning processes. Urban digital twins (UDTs) were first discussed in 2018. Seven years later, we ask: What has been their contribution to urban planning and decision making so far? Here, we systematically review 88 peer-reviewed articles to map and compare UDTs’ ambitions with their realized contributions. Our results indicate that despite the vast technical developments, socio-technical challenges have remained largely unaddressed, causing many of UDTs’ ambitions to remain unrealized. We identify three categories in these socio-technical challenges: interdisciplinary integration (II), consensual contextualization (CC), and procedural operationalization (PO). Accordingly, we consolidate a socio-technical research and development agenda to realize the ambitions of UDTs for urban planning and decision making: Augmented Urban Planning (AUP).