Coupling a Physical Replica with a Digital Twin: A Comparison of Participatory Decision-Making Methods in an Urban Park Environment

Public participation is crucial in promoting built environment quality. By using Nancuiping park in China as a case study, this research brings attention to the digital twin park compared to the physical replica in a participatory workshop. Using UAV oblique photography, we created a digital twin model of this park and divided it into six layers to better manage and analyze the environment. Bracing the ‘bottom-up’ design philosophy, in the workshop, we analyzed existing issues in the park and simulated built environment changes, taking suggestions and comments from participants into account to support the decision-making of the park’s optimization. Our digital twin model and physical replica were assessed through a questionnaire in which 59 participants used 3 defined indicators: usability, interactivity, and scenario simulation and visualization quality. The results suggest that the physical replica is easier to use in the participatory design. However, the digital twin model can provide better interactivity and efficient scene simulation and visualization quality. The statistical analysis of the relationship between participants’ feedback on the two models and their sociodemographics (age, gender, and education background) shows that age is a barrier to promoting digital twins for older participants. Meanwhile, the digital twin’s highly interactive features and high-resolution visualization capability were attractive to the younger and well-educated participants. Our study indicates future directions to improve the urban digital twin by incorporating human feedback into the urban model, thus establishing a two-way interaction between the digital system, the physical environment, and human perceptions.