Digital Twins for Smart Rural Places
Digital twins — computational replicas of physical systems fed by real-time sensor data — have transformed infrastructure planning in large cities. This project asks whether the same tools can be made to work in small towns and rural communities, where technical capacity is limited, resources are constrained, and the social dynamics of sensor deployment are very different from urban contexts.
The project works across two Wyoming testbed communities, each with distinct planning challenges. In Laramie, the work integrates directly with the city’s Downtown Development Plan, developing digital twin tools focused on optimizing parking and traffic flow in a small city center navigating growth and competing infrastructure demands. In Afton, the team is building an interactive 3D transportation digital twin of downtown using drone-collected imagery and LiDAR, a network of privacy-preserving sensor nodes, and the Cesium visualization platform. A central motivation in Afton is the town’s rapid residential growth on its outskirts — the twin is designed to generate the traffic data needed to plan infrastructure that can absorb and respond to that development before its effects fully materialize.
In both communities, real-time data streams to the SEaSON platform — the University of Wyoming’s statewide smart and connected community data infrastructure — where it is available for community use and ongoing analysis. The system is designed as a participatory testbed: not just a technical demonstration, but a platform for residents and elected officials to identify the infrastructure priorities that matter most to them.
The social science component is equally central. Working within a Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework, the team conducts community workshops and stakeholder interviews to understand questions, concerns, and aspirations about data-driven planning tools in rural contexts. The goal is to ensure that the technology being developed is not only technically sound but genuinely desired and trusted by the communities it is meant to serve.
The two-community pilot positions the project for a future NSF Smart & Connected Communities grant, which would expand the framework to additional Wyoming communities and infrastructure domains. The broader vision is an open, adaptable toolkit for rural digital twin development — transferable to transportation, utilities, public safety, and other domains across the rural West.