CHENNAI: The Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA) is planning to create a digital picture of how Chennai travels by using ‘digital twins’ of Chennaiites, which will be generated using real-time anonymised data of smartphone users.
The data, shared by telecom providers, will be used to recreate mobility patterns in the city - where trips begin and end at the zonal level (eg. ward, neighbourhood, corridor), time of day (peak vs non-peak), day of the week (weekday vs weekend), trip duration, distance, etc.)
While the project discussions are still in their early stages, if all goes according to plan, Chennai may become the first Indian city to have a telecom-powered ‘digital twin’, which will digitally recreate the city’s mobility patterns through multiple layers that capture the city’s terrain, infrastructure, and mobility.
With more than 700 million smartphones in use, telecom infrastructure now acts as a live urban sensor-capturing citywide mobility in real time. The idea is to use anonymised telecom data from call detail records (CDRs), tower pings, or mobile applications, detected using algorithms.
A senior CUMTA official told TNIE that early discussions are underway to build a collaborative framework using anonymised mobile phone data to derive origin-destination (OD) matrices, which are fundamental to transport planning. They estimate how many people travel from each location (origin) to every other location (destination) over a given period.
For now, officials intend to start with a focused corridor and then scale after demonstrating impact. CUMTA will define a specific zone within Chennai for the pilot and is looking to set up a joint working group to streamline data protocols.
The digital twin environment will help test real-time policy scenarios, route changes, or network expansions. While the telecom data infers movement patterns using algorithms, other data sets like CCTV feeds, GPS logs etc. may also be integrated to augment accurate extraction of OD matrices.
“The deputy director general of telecommunications recently visited Chennai, and we had discussions with CUMTA and DoT officials,” a top CUMTA official confirmed. “A non-disclosure agreement will be signed with telecom companies to enable data sharing. A pilot is being explored and we expect to finalise it in a few days before taking it forward with the DoT,” the official added.
Between 2014 and 2025, India’s telephone connections jumped from 933 million to over 1.2 billion.