The Citizen Test Process in Virtual Gothenburg Lab: Involvement in city development through the digital twin of Gothenburg

Abstract

The need to understand and analyse changes in city development is increasing in order to develop sustainable cities. Autonomous vehicles will be more common in shared spaces in the near future which results in challenges in the meeting between autonomous vehicles and pedestrians. In order to test future traffic scenarios where autonomous vehicles are involved, digital twins can be used as a tool, and Gothen burg City is currently developing their own digital twin parallel with the test bed Virtual Gothenburg Lab. In order to include the human perspective in digital tests with autonomous vehicles, citizens can be involved as test subjects and with that also be a part of city development. Why, when and how they should be involved in tests in order to create value for customers and VGL have been investigated through interviews and surveys with citizens and possible future customers of VGL. The analysis of the collected data resulted in findings that showed that customers want to test citizens’ behaviour, emotions, understanding and opinions digitally in order to save resources and time to market. Digital tests are also a safer way of performing tests for the test subjects. The customers need the citizens to represent the human perspective, which requires an interest and willingness of participation from the citizens. Several criteria were found related to the tests and are impor tant for customers and citizens to enter VGL. In order to fulfill the customer and citizen criteria of accessibility, time efficiency, effort, immersiveness, credible data and number of participants, an app and a VR simulator are suitable tools and were developed as a part of the Citizen Test Process that was delivered to VGL in this master thesis project.