How Digital Twins and Big Data Are Transforming Smart Mobility in Modern Cities

The study shows that combining digital twins and big data can transform smart mobility from a purely technological upgrade into a collaborative urban ecosystem, where real-time data, simulation, and user feedback continuously improve transport efficiency, sustainability, and accessibility. Using Italy as a case, it highlights that effective governance, data sharing, and privacy safeguards are as critical as technology in delivering inclusive and resilient urban mobility systems.

Researchers from the Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli,” the Università degli Studi di Teramo, and the Università di Bari examine how digital twin technology and big data together are reshaping urban mobility, arguing that this convergence marks a decisive shift in how cities plan, govern, and experience movement. Rather than treating smart mobility as a collection of isolated technologies, the study frames it as a living ecosystem in which public authorities, technology providers, transport operators, research institutions, and citizens continuously interact and co-create value. Grounded in the Italian urban context, the research highlights mobility as a strategic arena where digital transformation, sustainability goals, and governance challenges converge.

From Smart Cities to Smart Mobility

The article situates smart mobility within the broader evolution of smart cities driven by rapid advances in digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and big data analytics. These tools have enabled cities to move away from static, fragmented transport systems toward interconnected, data-driven environments capable of real-time monitoring and adaptive decision-making. Mobility emerges as a cornerstone of this transformation because it directly affects congestion, emissions, accessibility, and quality of life. Big data allows cities to understand traffic flows and commuter behavior at unprecedented scale, while digital twins, virtual replicas of physical transport systems, make it possible to simulate scenarios, test policies, and anticipate future challenges without disrupting real-world operations.

Why Digital Twins and Big Data Belong Together

While existing research has often examined big data and digital twins separately, the authors argue that their combined use unlocks far greater potential. Big data provides the raw material, continuous streams of information from sensors, vehicles, and users, while digital twins transform that data into actionable intelligence through visualization, simulation, and predictive modeling. Together, they enable cities to shift from reactive transport management to proactive and preventive strategies. However, the study stresses that technology alone is insufficient. The real transformation occurs when these tools are embedded within institutional arrangements and collaborative practices that allow multiple actors to share data, align objectives, and jointly design solutions.

Italy as a Living Laboratory

Italy offers a revealing case for studying this integration. Its cities face chronic congestion, pollution, and spatial constraints, particularly in historic centers, while governance is often fragmented across local, regional, and national levels. Using twelve in-depth interviews with stakeholders ranging from public transport authorities and municipal governments to technology firms, academics, non-profits, and end users, combined with extensive policy and document analysis, the study maps how smart mobility ecosystems function in practice. At the level of firms and citizens, digital twins and big data enable personalized mobility services, dynamic traffic management, predictive maintenance, and smarter parking, delivering tangible benefits such as reduced travel times and improved safety. At the same time, concerns about privacy, cybersecurity, and ethical data use remain central, shaping public trust and acceptance.

Collaboration, Governance, and Feedback Loops

At an intermediate organizational level, the research highlights the importance of partnerships among cities, technology providers, and research institutions. Italian examples from Turin, Milan, and Genoa show how public–private collaborations and university-led initiatives are deploying digital twins to integrate sensors, connected infrastructure, and analytics platforms into coherent mobility systems. Citizens increasingly participate through feedback and co-design processes, contributing local knowledge that improves system performance. The study identifies two critical feedback loops at the heart of this ecosystem: one linking technology providers and mobility operators, enabling continuous innovation through real-time data exchange, and another connecting mobility operators with end users, whose behaviors and feedback feed directly into system optimization.

Toward Sustainable and Inclusive Mobility Futures

At the institutional level, national and European policies shape the boundaries within which smart mobility evolves. Programs such as Italy’s Smarter Italy initiative, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, and Horizon Europe funding have accelerated experimentation with data-driven mobility while aligning local projects with broader goals of decarbonization, digitalization, and social inclusion. Yet the authors argue that effective governance must go further, harmonizing laws on data protection, cybersecurity, and interoperability to ensure innovation does not deepen inequalities or erode public trust. Ultimately, the article concludes that the real promise of digital twins and big data lies not in technology itself, but in ecosystem governance that balances efficiency with ethics, innovation with inclusion, and local experimentation with long-term sustainability, lessons that extend well beyond the Italian case.