Urban Digital Twins: Hype or Vibes?

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Speaker: Prof. Dr. Max Mühlhäuser, TU Darmstadt

Abstract:
The talk will start with a very quick overview of Ubiquitous Computing and the corresponding four research areas addressed at the speaker’s lab. Afterwards, we will check whether or how the paradigm ‘digital twins’ may be different from Ubiquitous Computing and its many synonyms. We will then turn to ‘urban’ digital twins conceived for smart cities: the solved and unsolved issues of smart city related computer science research will be highlighted. We will then turn to a specific research subfield of urban digital twins, coined as ‘4D city’, which is going to be treated more in-depth during the sabbatical stay of the speaker at USI. A second challenge, namely resilience for an through ICT, will be linked to the collaborative research center EmergenCity founded in Darmstadt in 2020. In conclusion, the speaker will mention the six interactive presentations planned during his stay, asking for feedback on the suitability and desired emphasis. 

Biography:
Prof. Dr. Max Mühlhäuser is head of the Telecooperation Lab (TK for short) at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Informatics Dept. His lab conducts research on smart ubiquitous computing environments in the Future Internet – from smart mixed-reality rooms to smart cities and smart & resilient critical infrastructures. Novel scientific contributions to such smart environments are pursued by integrating four fields of scientific research:

• Networks & distributed systems (e.g., highly adaptive Internet concepts, mission critical microservices for fog/edge computing);
• Human Computer Interaction (e.g., XR, on-body, physiological, tangible, small/large-scale, and fabricated interaction, telepresence);
• Proactive intelligent systems (e.g., multi-assistant platforms for ubiquitous computing, intelligent business process analytics, spatiotemporal mobility & activity pre-diction);
• Privacy, trust & cybersecurity (e.g., anonymous communication, cooperative botnet / intrusion detection, trust based assessment of security settings).

Prof. Mühlhäuser leads or co-supervises various multilateral projects, e.g., on the Internet-of-Services, smart products, ad-hoc and sensor networks, and civil security; these projects are funded by the National Funding Agency DFG, the EU, German ministries, and industry. Max is heading the doctoral school Privacy and Trust for Mobile Users and takes key roles in cooperative centers such as the center for resilient digital cities “EmergenCity”, the national research center for Cybersecurity ATHENE, and the collaborative research center MAKI on the Future Internet. Max has also led several university wide programs that fostered innovations in E-Learning. In his career, Max put a particular emphasis on technology transfer, e.g., as the founder and mentor of several campus-based industrial research centers.

Prof. Mühlhäuser has over 35 years of experience in research and teaching in areas related to Ubiquitous Computing (UC), Networks and Distributed Systems, E-Learning, and Privacy&Trust. He held permanent or visiting professorships at the Universities of Kaiserslautern, Karlsruhe, Linz, Darmstadt, Montréal, Sophia Antipolis (Eurecom), and San Diego (UCSD). In 1993, he founded the TeCO institute (www.teco.edu) in Karlsruhe, Germany, which became one of the pace-makers for Ubiquitous Computing research. Max regularly publishes in HCI, Ubiquitous and Distributed Computing, Multimedia, and Securtiy/Privacy/Trust conferences and journals. He authored or co-authored more than 700 peer-reviewed publications. He was and is active in numerous conference program committees, as organizer of several annual conferences, and as member of steering and editorial boards or guest editor for journals like IEEE Trans. Multimedia, ACM IMWUT, Pervasive Computing, ACM Multimedia, Pervasive and Mobile Computing and the like.

Host: Silvia Santini