OPINION - The Leader podcast | London 2050: ‘digital twins’ to keep transport moving

This week’s been a tale of woe for Londoners trying to go about our daily business -Tube strikes left more people cramming on buses, trying their best to keep calm and carry on.

As the summer temperature rises, there’s more industrial action on the horizon.

In 2050, the population is predicted to have risen by well over a million people.

So how will the road and TfL’s Tube and rail networks cope, and how is planning for freak events, such as pandemics, undertaken?

It’s not all flying taxis - although that could be part of the solution.

The answer begins with your “digital twin” making up a “synthetic population” of Londoners zipping around a computer doing virtual tasks and errands - just like humans would.

The Leader podcast is joined by Dr Aruna Sivakumar, a reader in consumer demand modelling and urban systems at Imperial College London’s Centre for Transport Studies.

We’ll break down why these “microsimulations” are critical to stop the capital grinding to a halt in the future and discuss grid demand by electric vehicles and flying taxis.

Listen here, or here:

Dr Sivakumar’s also director of the Urban Systems Lab, and is a research expert on smart cities of the future, who you can hear discuss the controversial per-mile charging and whether the capital’s olde worlde streets are fit for purpose in the second half of the 21st Century.

You can find The Leader podcast on your Spotify Daily Drive or wherever you stream your podcasts.