A Digital Twin Architecture for Intelligent Public Transportation Systems: A FIWARE-Based Solution

Public transportation systems play a vital role for society, but they often fall short in addressing the dynamic needs of commuters. Intelligent Public Transportation Systems (IPTS) hold promise for enhancing efficiency and adapting to these evolving requirements. Digital twins (DT), virtual representations of real-world systems, can be leveraged to create dynamic replicas that guide real-time decision-making and optimization for IPTS. This paper examines the concept of digital twins and their potential for IPTS, highlighting the challenges and opportunities that must be addressed to fully capitalize on this technology. Moreover, a DT-based IPTS architecture is proposed leveraging on FIWARE Smart Data Models for data interoperability. Finally, a small real-world instance of the proposed architecture and data model is illustrated involving a bus-based IPTS where the DT technology is adopted to enable bus passenger demand prediction and bus scheduling update.