How My Burning City Exposed the Gaps in Our Digital Twin EcosystemsWhen Alerts Hallucinate: A Firsthand Look at the Gaps in Emergency Systems When you live on the edge of disaster, every alert feels like life or death. Living in Pasadena, I learned this firsthand during the LA Eaton fire. While I was fortunate to be spared, thousands of others lost their homes, businesses, and sense of safety. The fire raged on, leaving chaos in its wake—but for me, the chaos started long before the flames arrived. In the middle of the night, my iPhone (and those of 10 million other LA residents) lit up with an emergency evacuation alert: fire in my area. Heart pounding, I looked out the window, smelled smoke, and scrambled to make sense of the vague warning. Minutes passed. Another alert came, contradicting the first. These conflicting messages weren’t just confusing—they were a "hallucination" from an overloaded and malfunctioning government alert system struggling under the pressure of the crisis. A few minutes later, my panicked elderly mother called, asking if she needed to leave her home. I had no answers for her. I didn’t even know if I was safe, let alone if she was. I stood there, frozen, unsure of what to believe. Was this the moment to evacuate? Or was it another false alarm? I searched online in the middle of the night and found the Watch Duty app. It promised real-time, accurate information, and within minutes, I had more answers than the official systems could provide. Last week, I shared this experience at an American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) webinar for engineers alongside my colleagues from the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) Digital Twin Integration Subcommittee. I brought up examples of how real-time, synchronized systems can provide critical situational awareness. It resonated with the ASCE audience, whose expertise spans both horizontal and vertical infrastructure. The challenges we discussed—bridging the gaps between these domains and creating connected systems—are at the heart of what we need to address. The Nimble App That Outpaced Government Systems During LA Wildfires Watch Duty is a real-time wildfire tracking app that provides hyper-local updates down to the block and even building footprints by combining a range of data sources. It draws from public information—like weather, wind patterns, air quality, and maps—and combines it with community input to create a comprehensive, real-time picture of unfolding emergencies. What makes it unique is its ability to transform fragmented, hard-to-access data into actionable insights tailored to citizens' needs. During the LA wildfires, Watch Duty’s impact became undeniable. While government alert systems struggled to keep up and often crashed under the strain, Watch Duty saw traffic surge to over 3 million users a minute. Why? Their data was more accurate, complete, and updated in real-time, far surpassing the performance of traditional systems. Citizens and first responders alike turned to Watch Duty for critical updates, making it the go-to source for wildfire information. Built incrementally based on secure, standards to address a very specific use case—helping people stay safe during wildfires—Watch Duty grew from a citizen-driven demand for clarity and accuracy during crises. It’s a powerful example of how focused, use case-driven design can make even public data, often in the wrong formats or buried in silos, work effectively to save lives. The Perfect Digital Twin Watch Duty isn’t just an app—it’s a perfect example of what a digital twin can and should be. It’s not one monolithic system trying to do everything; it’s a synchronized system of systems integrating real-time data from diverse sources to create a dynamic, living model of reality. It connects weather patterns, air quality, wind conditions, critical infrastructure, and building footprints with human input, evacuation zones, and orders, all updated in real-time, providing actionable insights for those who need them most, and it does not hallucinate like the dumb government alerts I got in the middle of the night. A digital twin is not merely a single app or system; similar to Watch Duty, it represents an open standards-based ecosystem of interconnected tools and data sources that collaborate to tackle specific challenges. This interconnected approach is what renders it powerful, adaptable, and relevant, especially in high-stakes situations like wildfires. This is the essence of a digital twin: a real-time, responsive ecosystem that reflects the complexities of the physical world. By focusing on a specific problem—keeping people informed and safe during wildfires—Watch Duty demonstrates the power of a multi-source, interoperable approach. It reminds us that the most effective digital twins aren’t about creating one “perfect” system but about connecting many systems to work together in harmony. When Smart Buildings Stay Silent: A Wake-Up Call As impressive as Watch Duty is, using the app also revealed a glaring gap: the building outlines it shows are just that—outlines. There’s no deeper information about the infrastructure, assets, building systems, or buildings themselves. For something as critical as responding to a wildfire, this is a major shortcoming. Buildings are often treated as silent black boxes in the digital landscape, disconnected from the real-time data ecosystem. This needs to change. Watching first responders walk into burning buildings without knowing what was inside brought back an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. It was the same feeling I had watching 9/11 unfold, seeing firefighters climb the Twin Towers with limited knowledge of what awaited them. Decades later, the story hasn’t changed—it’s only gotten worse. Our buildings are still silent when it matters most. Imagine you’re a firefighter arriving at a building on the edge of a wildfire. You pull up a map and see the building footprint, but that’s all you have—no details about what’s inside, no locations of hazardous materials, gas shut-off valves, structural systems, or fire suppression systems. If you’re lucky, you might have outdated floor plans as PDFs or scattered bits of other data, but nothing comprehensive or reliable. This lack of information wastes precious time, puts lives at greater risk, and makes an already dangerous situation even more perilous. This gap isn’t just a challenge for first responders—it’s a challenge for the entire AECO (architecture, engineering, construction, and operations) industry, for owners, and for governments. The systems we’ve built to manage our infrastructure aren’t interoperable, and the data we have about our buildings is fragmented or outdated. We’ve invested in creating smarter cities and digital tools, but when push comes to shove, these systems often fail to work together in the moments we need them most. The AECO industry has a unique responsibility here. As designers and builders of the physical world, we must stop declaring we have “smart buildings” simply because they boast a static LEED plaque that says they’re gold or platinum. A plaque doesn’t make a building smart—it makes it a snapshot in time. Instead, we need to rethink how we treat buildings, moving beyond static, isolated objects to integrating them into a broader digital twin ecosystem. This ecosystem—a system of systems—must connect real-time data about buildings and infrastructure with the needs of those who interact with them. Owners and government agencies must also step up, demanding open standards and prioritizing the integration of building data into actionable, interoperable systems. Only then can we begin to build buildings and infrastructure that are truly dynamic, intelligent, and capable of responding to the complex challenges of the modern world. Why Are Smart Buildings and Cities So Dumb? Wait… isn’t this what smart digital twins were built for? Lessons from a city on fire. It’s a little embarrassing, isn’t it? All this technology, all these promises of connected systems—and yet, we’re still struggling with the basics. Let’s dig into this problem in the next post and figure out why our “smart” solutions often fail to live up to their name—and, more importantly, how we can make them truly intelligent, functional, and ready for the challenges ahead. Stay tuned for "Why Are Our Smart Buildings and Cities So Dumb?" Second in a series of blog posts: 1. Four Terrifying Reasons AI and Digital Twins Are Tied at the Hip 2. Yelling Fire in a Crowded City 3. Why Are Smart Buildings and Cities…Dumb? Kimon Onuma, FAIA
A recognized leader in BIM and Digital Twins, Kimon has over three decades of experience Building Informed Environments. His work focuses on open standards, interoperability, and innovative lifecycle management solutions, including the ONUMA System, BIMgenie, and BIMStorm. Kimon also leads the development of industry standards, contributing to the National Institute of Building Sciences' Digital Twin Integration Subcommittee and advancing AI integration in building processes. Comments are closed.
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