UrbanInsight: A Distributed Edge Computing Framework with LLM-Powered Data Filtering for Smart City Digital Twins

Abstract

Cities today generate enormous streams of data from sensors, cameras, and connected infrastructure. While this information offers unprecedented opportunities to improve urban life, most existing systems struggle with scale, latency, and fragmented insights. This work introduces a framework that blends physics-informed machine learning, multimodal data fusion, and knowledge graph representation with adaptive, rule-based intelligence powered by large language models (LLMs). Physics-informed methods ground learning in real-world constraints, ensuring predictions remain meaningful and consistent with physical dynamics. Knowledge graphs act as the semantic backbone, integrating heterogeneous sensor data into a connected, queryable structure. At the edge, LLMs generate context-aware rules that adapt filtering and decision-making in real time, enabling efficient operation even under constrained resources. Together, these elements form a foundation for digital twin systems that go beyond passive monitoring to provide actionable insights. By uniting physics-based reasoning, semantic data fusion, and adaptive rule generation, this approach opens new possibilities for creating responsive, trustworthy, and sustainable smart infrastructures.