Keywords

1 Introduction

European Union and the international organizations attention (European Commission 2019; Patto dei sindaci per il Clima e l’energia Europa, https://www.pattodeisindaci.eu/about-it/l-iniziativa/il-patto-in-cifre.html) placed on the cities and peri-urban environments mitigation effects has emphasized the fundamental importance of day-by-day monitoring. The latter is aimed at obtaining a real-time built system and subsystems control, prediction of future performance, and implementation of models that can simulate the design and development solutions impacts. In addition, among the strategies settled within the PNRR for urban regeneration, the city system digitization takes a central role, launching toward the development of Smart Cities, in view of innovative, inclusive, and sustainable cities (European Commission 2016). In this perspective, the Digital Twin (DT) becomes a strategic tool for the implementation of innovative and sustainable management strategies of urban systems, for its configuration as a digital copy of the physical environment, the relationships between the parties and the processes in place, past and future. It is also a useful tool for the implementation of participatory processes that through the empowerment of citizens generate democratic cities. To that end, the paper focuses on harbor DT applied to the Ancient Port of Genoa that can be visualized through a platform made by multiple layers and different categories of data in virtual reality for collaborative and participatory processes, focusing on port management, security, and decision support. The approach described supports citizens and decision-makers and planning professionals with tools to achieve partnership. The quantitative and qualitative data collected through different type of sensors provide a clear reading of the port complexity, involving all the stakeholders in the management and developing process.

2 Background Scenario: Digital Twin for Smart Settlement System

The realization of a smart governance using information and communication technologies (ICT) is closely linked to the development of smart cities in order to improve decision-making through better collaboration among different stakeholders, including public administrations and citizens (Lara et al. 2016; Pereira et al. 2018). One example is the use of IoT to address citizens’ needs and to improve their activities performances, to reduce negative impacts on the environment, to reduce costs of living (Mishra and Chakraborty 2020), and to ensure quality of built system and users’ satisfaction (Pinto 2019).

Many countries and governments consider smart cities a solution to global warming, population growth, and resource depletion (Deng et al. 2021). Especially, if related to the built environment monitoring, e.g., fault detection and diagnostics system using sensor networks and AI-based modern technologies, they could generate some benefits such as reducing maintenance costs, reducing energy consumption and associated costs, increased productivity, and extended equipment life (Brunone et al. 2021; Halmetoja 2022).

At this point, defining a digital model of a settlement system is the core to develop innovative strategies of knowledge management where monitoring through sensors, measurement technologies, IoT, machine learning technologies provides a real-time update (Kaur et al. 2020) and offers an interface that allows monitoring the past and present operation and makes prediction about the future (Grieves 2014; Wang et al. 2021). Digitization, and specifically DT, appears as an opportunity to catalyze and monitor the processes of transformation and development of cities in a perspective of circular economy and sustainability.

The DT must be considered as a process (Wenner et al. 2021), a dynamic model made of data that have a permanent and constant connection with the real world. It is more frequently adopted in facilitating facilities management operation to optimize operation efficiency at both building level and city level, in order to better answer to the requirement for a sustainable and appropriate city and space management, particularly in the current pandemic and eventually the post COVID-19 pandemics, where occupancy detection is an important part of the facility management to ensure users’ safety (Hou et al. 2021).

Liu et al. (2018) describe the components of DT: physical products in real space, virtual products in virtual space, and the connections of data and information that will tie the virtual and real products together; and the basic architecture that consists of sensor and measurement technologies, Internet IoT, and machine learning. Alongside this, Qi et al. (2021) design five dimension of DT: physical entities, virtual models, data, services and connections in digital twin.

Some prototypes have tested the functioning of the DT in the context of settlement systems, defining the potential of this tool. Dembski et al. (2020) have described the prototype of Herrenberg’s DT, in Germany, where the virtual model is a model 3D of the built environment, and the data model consists in data from volunteered geographic information. The experimentation has revealed that urban digital twin allows to gain a better understanding of potential solutions for urban challenges improving the interaction processes between citizens on the one hand and official local representatives on the other. This provided the opportunity to test a series of scenarios and potential solutions as well as evaluate their impacts using a real-life case.

Another experimentation (Lu et al. 2020) was carried out within West Cambridge site of the University of Cambridge, here the DT simulate the behavior of a system of buildings, integrating heterogeneous data sources, supporting intelligent data query, and providing a smarter decision-making. This demonstrator integrates an as-is multi-layered IFC Building Information Model (BIM), building management system data, space management data, real-time IoT-based sensor data, asset registry data, and an asset tagging platform. The demonstrator also includes a tool for improving asset maintenance and another one for asset tracking using augmented reality (AR) and equipment failure prediction.

Within the smart cities debate, port digitalization is defined as a complex phenomenon that concerns multiple aspects to control and monitor, and as Inkinen et al. (2021) suggests is a generic term, and it refers to the adoption, collection, storage, analysis, and use of digital information in ports and port communities. It is manifested through digital platforms, and it has impacts on operational management causing changes in organizational work cultures and practices in ports (Heilig et al. 2017).

3 Materials and Methods

The Digital and Sustainable Harbour 2030 (DSH2030) project, funded under Liguria region’s POR FESR, has the aim of developing and enhancing a Digital Twin of the Porto Antico of Genoa to supervise and optimize the management processes of the area. The construction of the digital model is based on collecting data from different sources and moving through IoT, 5G, and AI.

The area object of the research project (Fig. 20.1) is the one under the management of Porto Antico di Genova SpA, included within the perimeter of the Expo of Genoa defined according to art. 3 c.1 l. August 23, 1988 n. 373, an area of over 130,000 m2 of which 71,000 m2 of covered area and 59,000 m2 outdoors, characterized by different building typologies, different activities and uses.

Fig. 20.1
An illustration of the site plan of an area highlights the buildings and soil in the region.

Expo area managed by Porto Antico di Genova SpA: the buildings in yellow and the soil in gray

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Its current configuration is the result of a process of urban regeneration that began essentially in 1992 and that still continues today in the structuring and completion of projects that aim to connect the city to the sea.

DT become the ambient where the administration can accurately simulate and plan the area’s activities in a way that is healthy, safe, and comfortable for visitors and those who work there, efficient in terms of resource management for those who manage it, and sustainable for the environment.

In order to design a proper and useful DT model, it was significant having a dialogue with the policymakers to well understand how supporting their decision-making and create a virtual ambient through which to more easily manage the port system.

According to this view, at the basis of the platform for data exploitation, aggregation, and management, interviews were conducted with key stakeholders (managers of: Event Management and Procurement and Facility Management offices) to properly understand themes to be addressed and how. Therefore, in order to improve and maximize the operability of the area management structure, a platform to administrate is being implementing in order to make available IoT, geo-referenced data, processed and produced data (Nuzzo et al. 2021). The management of the input data coming from different categories of sensors, through the structuring of diversified information layers for each type of data, will allow the manager to keep under control the performance of the systems, the flows of people moving within the area, anomalous consumptions.

Navigating in the different parts of the platform, that provides digital maps, with overview, zoom, and selection functions, allows users to view and interact with the data and metadata that include links to retrieve further documentation and references (Fig. 20.2). In relation to the above, IoT technologies are essential to make every object, person or building a source of data usable in real time; advanced and increasingly powerful video analysis algorithms, thanks to artificial intelligence approaches, make surveillance cameras powerful and advanced smart sensors able to collect a large amount of information; data storage requires a secure and reliable cloud. Finally, artificial intelligence through machine learning techniques allows to extract information content of great relevance from the acquired data.

Fig. 20.2
A screenshot exhibits a photograph of a place that comprises a large number of buildings along the shore of a sea. It indicates a pop-up screen with a list of folders labeled in a foreign language.

Integrated and multi-layer platform for the port management

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The prototype developing within DSH2030 project and visualized in virtual reality, for supporting a collaborative management platform, is set up as follows: a 3D model of the built environment provided by local authorities (Traverso 2021), data collected from an heterogeneous type of sensors (mobile devices, sensors, video content analysis), a multi-layer platform for aggregate data exposure and management.

Particularly, the collection of data for monitoring is structured on three levels: The first level is through the installation of smart meters for energy production and consumption, air quality, weather forecasts, sea level, water consumption; the second level is through the installation of cameras; the third is through mobile applications developed within the project that allow to receive from users alerts about faults on the built in systems on one hand and their position over time on the other. Regarding the monitoring for maintenance strategies, it was decided to apply and extend the field of competence of the Maintenance Urban Sharing Tool application (Viola and Borriello 2017). It is a product of a synergy between Department of Architecture (DiARC) and Structures for engineering and architecture (DiSt) of the University of Naples, Stress Scarl and ETT SpA. This tool, that is also object of a doctoral ongoing research, is composed by a mobile app to send alerts for the detection of faults and performance anomalies on subsystems and a Web application to incorporate the notification sent by the app users for the purpose of timely, effective, and efficient management of inspections and maintenance interventions. Moreover, the application MUST has been complemented with a function that allows monitoring of water meters (Fig. 20.3); this implementation derives from the administration’s need to have a digitized monitoring of water meters, which is currently managed by writing data on sheets of paper that are, only later, digitized by the hand of an operator.

Fig. 20.3
A screenshot presents a bar graph at the top, a drawing of an abstract pattern representative of buildings at the bottom, and the readings from 2 machines on the left panel. The labels are in a foreign language.

Concept for the dashboard aim to monitor water consumption

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The optimization of management processes, through the reading of data on the platform from constant monitoring, has as a further objective the improvement of the attractiveness and safety of the area by promoting a digital and sustainable development.

4 Conclusions

The DSH2030 project therefore has a strong innovative character, across all its main components. It proposes a holistic view of real/virtual space that makes it vividly ‘intelligent’ position data, presence data, projection of displacements and accesses, etc. together with the data acquired by the distributed sensors allow to carry out elaborations, correlations, scenario simulations that are made available in the dashboards dedicated to the area manager (Porto Antico di Genova SpA). In this way, it is possible to close the chain between those who manage the area, who plan the activities and action in case of critical situations, and the final are users.

In the context of European development policies, the research outlines innovative ways and applications of knowledge management oriented to promote sustainable management and development of waterfronts. The enhanced Digital Twin will allow a real-time monitoring of the port system performances. DSH2030 is a living demonstrator of how data-driven tools also allow to effectively support both the needs expressed by the Porto Antico SpA, as operator, of continuous optimization of all processes (economic, security, environmental) for which it is responsible, and to offer adaptive tools and models able to effectively react to sudden changes in the scenarios of use and expectations of end users, as well as possible future new emergencies.