blog: the surprisingly high-stakes fight over a traffic-taming 'digital twin'

Laura Bliss, City Lab, July 19 2019

Original article published on City Lab.

The Surprisingly High-Stakes Fight Over A Traffic-Taming 'Digital Twin'

This article by Laura Bliss for City Lab, explores thoughts on digitising traffic and the use of digital twin technology to accomplish this. She goes into the pros and cons that coincide with using this kind of technology to control and gain information from vehicles, and discusses different ways to solve the issue of traffic control.

What becomes apparent throughout the article, is the issue of privacy in digital twin technology, and how this might cause people to hold back on utilising it. Privacy, when it comes to you and your data, is hugely important and having to worry about whether your personal data is being used in the right way or not within your everyday life, is not something people want to have to think about. What we really need is a digital twin solution that allows individuals to have control of their own data. That solution is available right now.

Using a single ecosystem that allows the data owner to pick and choose who they share data with and what data they share, removes these privacy concerns. This puts the control entirely into the hands of the person or company that the data belongs to, reducing the risk of unwanted data sharing and hacking of personal information, as in the Bradley Cooper case. This means that we can make massive technological advances such as these, without having concerns about people opposing the idea, without worrying about the welfare of the population, and without giving too much power to single companies, organisations, and individuals. This technology also means that hacking is more easily avoided as information only makes sense to the person who is seeking it, therefore if an interception is made, the hacker can only gain that one piece of data which will mean nothing to them without context.

This technology could help towards digitising traffic and creating more safe and efficient roads, without the need for privacy concerns and worries about too much control being put in the hands of individual companies and people. Digital twins and their own secure interoperable ecosystem are available and are being used right now. Find out more on our website.