CIVIC-PG Track A: Create an Ethical Urban Digital Twin to Co-design Heat Mitigations for Integrated Indoor and Outdoor Environments

The objective of this Civic Innovation Challenge (CIVIC) project is to support research focused on designing and piloting an Ethical Urban Digital Twin (EUDT) tailored for San Antonio's Westside neighborhood — a historically disadvantaged Hispanic community. Collaboration between the University of Texas at San Antonio, Texas A&M University, the Historic Westside Residents Association, and the City of San Antonio seeks to provide holistic solutions to mitigate heat-related problems.

With rising temperatures, measures like enhanced insulation, air conditioning, and natural ventilation are crucial to individuals’ health. However, past studies often investigate indoor or outdoor spaces separately, overlooking the inherent connection between the two and limiting the offering of integrated solutions. While digital twin holds promise to bridge the gap between indoor and outdoor spaces for thermal comfort evaluation, they generates ethical concerns related to privacy, transparency, and fairness that might lead to undue burden on disadvantaged communities.

The broader significance of this research project lies in its potential to serve as a scalable model for aiding other communities facing similar socioeconomic and climate challenges.

In Stage 1, the research project centers on building an Ethical Urban Digital Twin for disadvantaged communities to mitigate heat risk. Academic partners will use privacy-preserving sensors and algorithms to prototype digital twin models of indoor and outdoor environments for homes, offices, and businesses. Low-cost PurpleAir sensors will be installed to gather real-time microclimate data, leveraging past work and existing assets in the Westside neighborhood.

Community engagement will involve workshops and interactive sessions with residents and stakeholders to co-design the EUDT and address ethical concerns. The integrated models intend to enable simulation of various environmental scenarios to assess thermal comfort and identify effective mitigation strategies. The anticipated outcomes of this research include: (1) an integrated indoor and outdoor digital twin prototype powered by real-time environmental sensors; (2) community feedback on the ethics of digital twin prototype and the feasibility of risk mitigation solutions; (3) a Stage 2 work plan ready for immediate implementation.

This project is in response to the Civic Innovation Challenge program’s Track A. Climate and Environmental Instability - Building Resilient Communities through Co-Design, Adaption, and Mitigation and is a collaboration between NSF, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.