Integrating mobility digital twin with 24-hour microsimulation model: a case study of Bologna

This thesis presents the integration of a mobility Digital Twin with a 24-hour activity-based microsimulation model, focused on the urban transport network of Bologna. The goal of this research is to improve urban mobility planning and management by using a Digital Twin that accurately represents Bologna’s transportation system. By combining this with a detailed microsimulation model, it is possible to simulate and analyze the behavior of the city's population and vehicle traffic under different demand scenarios. To represent the transport network, open-source data such as OpenStreetMap (OSM) and public transport schedules (GTFS) are used, while the transport demand is modeled using origin-destination (OD) matrices and traffic data collected from city sensors. A key part of this study is the comparison of two simulations: one with 10% and one with 50% of the transport demand, to see how realistic and scalable the models are. The results are validated through traffic detectors, providing important data on vehicle flows on Bologna’s streets. Finally, the daily travel times for different transport modes are analyzed and compared, revealing significant differences between modes.