Innovative approaches to green digital twin technologies of sustainable smart cities using a novel hybrid decision-making system

Abstract

Digital twin technologies play a very important role in the provision of smart cities. However, it is not clear which innovative strategies should be implemented first on how to optimize digital twin technologies for sustainable smart cities. The main performance indicators should be identified to use the limited resources more efficiently and to generate more effective investment strategies. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to generate innovative approaches to green digital twin technologies of sustainable smart cities. To achieve this issue, first, important criteria of digital twin technologies for assessing sustainable smart cities are weighted via spherical fuzzy simple weight calculation (SIWEC). The second part includes ranking innovative alternatives for green digital twin technologies by considering spherical fuzzy simple additive weighting (SAW). The main contribution of this manuscript is to identify the most effective investment strategies for the improvements of digital twin technologies to reach smart cities by establishing a novel model. The preference of the SIWEC method in the criteria weighting process provides some advantages to the model. The most important feature of this method is that the direct importance of the criterion is taken into consideration in the questions asked to the experts. In this way, it is possible for the experts to give more sensitive answers. The findings indicate that smart grid integration (weight: 0.231) is determined as the most important criterion in the development of digital twin technologies for the provision of smart cities. Circular economy (weight: 0.230) is another variable that plays an important role in the provision of smart cities. On the other hand, decentralized energy system with microgrids is found as the most important alternative for this situation. Some critical actions should be taken to improve the smart grid effectiveness. In this scope, providing renewable energy incentives has a strong influence on the improvements of these projects.