Digital Twins: Accelerating the Digital Transformation in the Chinese Transportation Sector

Introduction

Transportation is an important link connecting the city, and it is also an important channel for the development of the city to transport passenger flow and logistics. The impact and role of information technology on urban transportation may go beyond infrastructure systems, so the development goal of transportation informatization can not only stay in the advanced nature of intelligent transportation technology itself but should be consistent with urban development goals (Wang, 2015). China is a big transportation country. Digital transformation in transportation is the use of digitalization to empower transportation in terms of distribution, management and regulation. This requires opening up and connecting data information scattered in different departments to achieve holographic perception, real-time judgment and global decision-making capabilities for pedestrians, vehicles and road conditions. Only digital transformation can make China move from a transportation power to a transportation power. As early as the 1990s, countries around the world began to gradually carry out the international standardization of intelligent transportation (ITS), and China also opened research on the digital transformation of transportation. This shows that the digital transformation of China's transportation sector is an inevitable trend.

At present, China's traffic is facing problems such as complex driving scenarios, traffic congestion and parking difficulties. However, residents have higher and higher requirements for the safety and convenience of transportation. At this time, the real-time, closed-loop digital twin technology to empower smart transportation has become a new direction for future transportation development. Digital twin technologies can empower intelligent transportation in many ways to meet the needs of future mobility. First of all, the digital twin can collect data in real-time and synchronize traffic operation visualization, providing a test space for traffic model deduction and completing data-driven decision-making. Second, the data generated by the digital twin virtual space can also provide a high-precision map. Digital twin technology based on real data and virtual models can improve the safety and stability of intelligent driving, thereby accelerating the safer landing and promotion of intelligent driving. In addition, the road surface in urban areas is relatively complex, the traffic flow changes greatly, and accurately quantifying dynamic urban traffic is a difficult point for modern transportation. Digital twins can achieve insight into urban traffic dynamics by aggregating all factor data to simulate the city's traffic that has been in motion. From the perspective of the whole city, the overall situation is planned to achieve the optimal solution for congestion control.

Using CiteSpace, a visualization analysis tool, you can see the whole process of digital twin technology being applied in China. This paper analyzes a survey published in 25 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) including Jiangsu Province and Sichuan Province in China, with the theme of “Applying Digital Twin Technologies in China's Transportation Sector to Promote Its Digital Transformation”, and analyzes the 603 questionnaires collected, giving a brief analysis of the digitization process and the extent of the use of digital twins in China's transportation sector. Taking the “intelligent transportation cloud” in Guizhou Province and the pilot digital twin transportation system in Guiyang City, the intelligent transportation hub of Xi'an Railway Station North Square and the digital transformation of Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport as examples, this paper analyzes the inevitability of digitalization in the transportation field and the role of digital twins in pushing the digital process in the field of transportation.