Events

Monthly Roundtable: September 2025 – Advancing Digital Twins & Data Standards for Smart Mobility!

Our recent monthly roundtable brought together experts from government, academia, and industry to discuss the future of smart mobility and digital twin applications.

Key Highlights:

Delhi Visit Update: Dr. Ramki Srinivasan and Prof. Gitakrishnan Ramadurai shared insights from meetings with the Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Civil Aviation, DPIIT, and AI CoE, IIT Kanpur. Collaborative work with Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA) on Digital Chennai and analysis of eWay bill, FASTag, and DoT data were also discussed.

Public Transit & Data Applications: Dr. Ravi Gadepalli (Transit Intelligence) highlighted experiences in public transit data usage and the importance of standardized data for planning and operations.

Digital Twin Applications: Prof. Gitakrishnan Ramadurai presented three key pilot examples:

LOUP Project: Using app data to identify mode of travel, O-D patterns, activity, and time spent, validating DoT data and building intelligent layers.

First & Last Mile Connectivity: Identifying metro station catchment areas and access patterns, focusing on stations with lower than projected footfall.

Chennai Central–Tiruvallur Line: Building a digital twin of demand using DoT data for the proposed line doubling.

Insights & Discussions:

Dr. Ramachandran Balakrishna emphasized starting with small sample datasets.

Dr. Ravi Gadepalli shared learnings on O-D matrices using DoT data and OSSii protocol to analyze population behavior and patterns.

Floor discussions explored reasons behind differences in performance across metro stations.

Data Standards for Digital Twins: Adarsh Yadav presented existing standards (NeTEX, SIRI, Transmodel) and led discussions on adoption, adaptation, and gaps—particularly for emerging domains like EV mobility. Key challenges discussed included data quality, availability, standardization, and relevance of GTFS in Indian cities.

The session concluded with a brief on the upcoming Conclave on October 30th, featuring discussions on data standards for shared mobility and traffic, and the announcement of the Mint-a-thon on AI for Safe and Sustainable Mobility.

Key takeaways highlighted the digital twin applications, public transit data standards to enhance urban mobility planning and operations.