GIS: A foundation for Digital Twins

Chris Andrews Esri, Group Product Manager, Geoenabled Systems

Abstract

A Digital Twin is a virtual representation of the real world including physical objects, processes, relationships, and behaviors. GIS provides a simple key – ‘location’ – that allows analysis and integration of the diverse data models and data sets that make up a Digital Twin and GIS can be used to integrate multiple digital representations of real world assets and systems. GIS has been used to model real world systems with high accuracy for years, including utility networks, legal parcel fabrics, and traffic networks. Digital Twin projects build on older concepts of data warehousing, federated systems, and object-based data models by adding realism, interactive user experience, and high-resolution 3D and 4D models of assets and systems. GIS brings together federated data sets to enable users to create dashboards, story maps, and 2D, 3D, and 4D maps that can be used to facilitate communication, understanding, and analysis of complex systems, such as entire cities. Successful Digital Twin projects must navigate scope complexity, participant diversity, data ownership, and security by having well defined outcomes, application of user-centric design, and use open and declared standards for data, protocols, and interfaces. Ultimately, the Digital Twin must help the owner or operator of the real-world asset or system to solve business or mission-critical applications to justify the investment and process changes that will inform and maintain the twin. Through the use of GIS to bring together diverse data sets and systems, location becomes a critical component to realizing the value of the Digital Twin.

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The National Digital Twin

Mark Enzer, UK CDBB National Digital Twin

Abstract

The National Digital Twin (NDT) is a big idea that promises enormous value for the people of the UK, both in the delivery of new assets and in the performance of our existing infrastructure. And the key to releasing all that value is making ‘better decisions’, because better decisions, based on better analysis of better data, lead to better outcomes for people, which is the essential promise of the Information Age. The NDT is not envisaged as one massive model of everything, but as an ecosystem of connected digital twins. Connecting digital twins is all about interoperability - enabling secure resilient data sharing across organisational and sector boundaries, but this requires a level of data quality and consistency that the market alone cannot initiate; it requires government-level leadership to create the conditions that will enable the market to develop and thrive.

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The National Digital Twin

Marie Truelove, CSIRO’s Data61

Perspective

Abstract: Marie will present her perspectives on Urban Digital Twin ecosystem enablers from CSIRO Data61 experience developing Digital Twin data sharing platforms, which include the New South Wales (NSW) Department Customer Service’s Spatial Digital Twin, the Queensland (QLD) Spatial Digital Twin with partners Advance QLD and QLD Department of Resources, and Australia’s National Map with Geoscience Australia and the Digital Transformation Agency. Experiences of key enablers including data sharing, visualisation and accessibility, standards and formats, and governance, from implementation and testing will be introduced.

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“Digital Twinning”: Developing Asset Data During Design, Engineering and Construction

Devon Sparks, System Integration Consultant, Trimble

Perspective

Abstract: The effort associated with the creation and maintenance of digital asset representations is considered a critical threshold for broad Digital Twin adoption. Digital Twinning is a concept hat could define the evolution of data sets during surveying, design, engineering and construction phases. Using the proposed process, attribution and association, rather than creation and maintenance, results in a twin that is used for operations management. The approach has the potential to remove extra work and to provide data-rich models but deliverables will have to be attached to a city’s data framework.

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Towards a Future Connected City

Session Chair: Jennifer George, Strategic Commercialization Australia
Session Rapporteur: Josh Lieberman, OGC

In joining this Urban Digital Twins Summit, we all acknowledge our interest in building the future. We acknowledge that we aspire to build tomorrow’s super-connected smart cities - Urban Digital Twins. These are cities where the data generated across multiple industries and city-wide infrastructure will create real value for the people and inspire new technologies that will be the precursor of further innovation.

But as we have seen over the past year, circumstances change quickly, and tomorrow’s connected cities may not even look like what we are imagining today.

The opening presentation for this session delivers insights from working in the commercialisation of cutting-edge digital technologies, across more than 50 industries, for the past 15 years. It recognises that there are similarities and concepts that will hold the key to building our Urban Digital Twins. And while it might seem like the key is going to be advanced BIM, GIS or point- cloud, it will actually be ideas like collaboration, open innovation and standardisation that will guide our future success. These concepts seem quite simple – but are surprisingly difficult. They require a new awareness and new skills. They require us to step back, start with a concept that is broad and build a system that is open to change but protected at the same time.

In each of the sessions in this summit we will look at different perspectives about how to move forward with our digital initiatives. There will be presentations from across the world. As you listen to them, look for ways to collaborate. Think of experts and SMEs who you might approach to share the journey. Ask about their vision for future connectivity and service delivery. Take stock of where we are now but don’t be limited by it. Building the infrastructure today with today’s materials has always been inextricably linked to delivering value for the people of tomorrow. Digital requires the same approach its just a different material.

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Urban decarbonization strategies: data and modeling challenges

Ursula Eicker, Canada Excellence Research Chair for Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Cities and Communities, Concordia University

Abstract

Energy mapping and urban scale building energy modeling is advancing rapidly with a range of tools now available to analyze the status quo and project future decarbonisation scenarios. However, communal energy planners still struggle to obtain adequate input data to spatial maps or energy models. A case study from Kelowna, British Columbia, illustrates the case. Also, most tools are not easy enough to use for decision makers, that want to rapidly access and compare scenarios for urban developments. Providing standardized and open urban data sets and creating new ways of engaging users, for example in gamification approaches, might remove some of these barriers.

A strong stakeholder demand for integrated urban system models has yet to arise. Municipal governments or large energy utilities are often compartmentalized and they do not use the same data nor software tools to coordinate building retrofits, street maintenance, or multiple networks for energy, telecommunication, water, transit and others. This leads to inefficiencies and higher costs, for example when streets are opened multiple times or when network planners do not adequately take into account changes in spatial-temporal demand.

The keynote addresses the challenges of integrated urban system modeling for the decarbonisation of cities and proposes a modeling and data analytics platform approach that allows multiple stakeholders to jointly develop next generation cities scenarios.

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Jim Plume, buildingSMART

Abstract

This introductory presentation will describe a collaboration between buildingSMART International (bSI) and OGC, established to ensure that the efforts within both organisations to develop open standards for representing and managing digital information about the physical world are synchronised and complementary. This collaboration is realised through the Integrated Digital Built Environment Working Group (IDBE WG). We are committed to the idea that open standards are essential for the integration of all data associated with urban digital twins for effective human interaction with the physical world. This brief introduction will discuss the essential nature of information handled across both the BIM and geospatial domains, thereby setting a starting point for the panel discussion to follow.

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Base map Digital Twin Population: New Opportunities and Remaining Challenges

Debra F. Laefer, Professor of Urban Informatics, Center for Urban Science and Progress and Department of Civil and Urban Engineering, New York University

Abstract

Many communities aspire to having some form of digital twin. Motivations for such undertakings are wide ranging from improving municipal service delivery, to conducting stress testing for resiliency, to enhancing a city’s prestige.

Over the past two decades, there has been extensive discussion as to the real-time and near real-time collection and integration of dynamic data into these system from existing sensors (i.e. traffic cams, cell phones), those being developed in this Internet of Things century, and even citizen science initiatives. However, little has been written with regard to available strategies and critical considerations for populating a base map for use as a digital twin. Attempting to match local needs and aspirations with existing technological capabilities in a cost-restricted scenario often results in a mismatch between expectations and financial resources.

This talk will introduce prominent examples where insufficient broadness in the initial vision resulted in truncated usefulness or extensibility of the digital twin or its precursor. Such limitations may be the outgrowth of the selection of data types, formats, coverage or resolution, or it may come from the digital twin model, itself. This talk hypothesizes why this occurs and presents a wide range of new and emerging technical solutions for built environment documentation and highlights remaining considerations for data acquisition, processing, and storage. Finally a vision is provided for populating a base map in a dense urban environment. These include historical versioning and probabilistic object placement. This is demonstrated in the case of a neighborhood in Brooklyn New York.

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Trends of Technologies for Tracking Urban Mobility

Ruizhi Chen, LIESMARS, Wuhan University

Abstract

For achieving a safe, sustainable and efficient urban mobility, information about the vehicle flow and people flow running in urban area is essential. Global Navigation Satellite System like GPS is now capable to crowdsourcing traffic information outdoors via smartphones and offer users a good opportunity to select the best driving path to their destinations. However, it is still a challenge task to locating vehicles and people indoors using smartphones. This presentation will briefly discuss the technological trend of tracking urban mobility indoors including the technologies of Ultra-Wide Band (UWB), 5G, Wi-Fi RTT ranging, Bluetooth Angle of Arriving and Acoustic Ranging.

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Urban Challenges and Digital Twin Visions

Panel Moderator: Adam Beck, Smart City Council

Abstract

In this panel session we will hear from a series of leading policy makers, practitioners and innovators on the application of Digital Twins in supporting urban growth management. A series of presentations will cover the everything from data management systems and urban data modelling, to real time insights and decision making. Above all, this session will explore the proposition of the Digital Twin as the leading platform for managing complex urban challenges, whether it be land development, water infrastructure, mobility planning or community engagement.

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Digitalization of Urban Planning & Design: the value creation approach for digital twins

Zhongwen Huang, Director, Digital Planning Lab, Urban Redevelopment Authority

Abstract

Despite its small size, land area of just 721 square kilometres, Singapore has become a leader in the implementation of new technologies in various smart city and digital twin sectors and they have identified several regions as test-beds and incubators for the ongoing development of the disruptive technologies that will define the cities of the future.

As the Director of the Digital Planning Lab of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Singapore, Huang Zhongwen is deeply involved in these initiatives. Today he will share his insights into the complexities of building cross functional data-driven urban plans and give us some practical pointers based on his day-to-day experience around optimising Singapore’s geospatial and data analytics technologies.

Bio: Mr Huang Zhongwen heads the Digital Planning Lab at the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore. URA has been digitalizing the urban planning process, to be more data-informed and enabled by technology. In this role, he heads an inter-disciplinary team that applies data analytics for planning, design and develop digital planning tools, as well as foster innovations and partnerships. He will be sharing from the urban planning perspectives considerations to create value from Urban Digital Twins in meaningful and sustainable ways.

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Urban challenges and Digital Twin Visions

Session Chair: Alan Leidner, GISMO

Abstract

This session opening presentation will briefly examine the evolution of GIS leading up to the emergence of Digital Twin applications. It will be noted that Digital Twins are being enabled by new data types, greater processing speeds, advanced sensor technologies, and more powerful analytic and predictive techniques. Digital Twins will lead to enormous benefits for individuals and society as a whole. It is advised that successful Digital Twin implementations depend upon a solid enterprise GIS foundation that gives accurate spatial identity to all information.

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Global Urbanization and Development Perspectives

Greg Scott, United Nations GGIM

Perspective

Many of our global development challenges, particularly pertaining to socio-economic development, are intrinsically tied to population growth and, as a de facto measuring stick, cities and urbanization. Urbanization has been a major driver of development and poverty reduction in the past decade. In this regard, cities are rapidly transforming, providing the heartbeat for humanity, and are a key measurement and indicator towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and all other global development agendas.

However, like sustainable development itself, cities are complex, dynamic, dependent, and interdependent networks. They contain many interconnected moving parts – a system-of systems. Ensuring the sustainability of urbanization will require commensurate enabling technologies, tools and methods, such as Urban Digital Twins - using an integrated system-of systems approach over space and time. Such approaches will provide key insights to assist planners and decision-makers to better understand the ‘trade-offs’ that are being made to ensure our cities become more livable, inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable in the future.

This presentation will touch on these global to local aspects.This session opening presentation will briefly examine the evolution of GIS leading up to the emergence of Digital Twin applications. It will be noted that Digital Twins are being enabled by new data types, greater processing speeds, advanced sensor technologies, and more powerful analytic and predictive techniques. Digital Twins will lead to enormous benefits for individuals and society as a whole. It is advised that successful Digital Twin implementations depend upon a solid enterprise GIS foundation that gives accurate spatial identity to all information.

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Urban Digital Twin requirements, and what applications can learn from Industry 4.0

Dr. Richard J. Vestner, Senior Director Bentley Systems, Munich/Germany

Perspective

Originally developed in an industrial context, the Digital Twin concept is spreading to the Smart Cities environment. To exploit the full potential of an urban Digital Twin, a Connected Data Environment is required, in which various data sources are federated and aligned. This is still a challenge, especially in the departmental landscape of cities. However, opportunities arise from learning from Industry 4.0 applications, where data, models and connectivity enable full automation and self-learning systems.

In addition to popular smart city use cases covering mobility, energy and public safety, cities and utilities are increasingly realizing the value of Digital Twins for water management. The current pandemic has raised sensitivity for and awareness of 24/7 operations of city services, such as water supply and sanitation. A task that digital technologies are predestined to support.

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Geo ICT based “Systems of Systems” Approach as Critical Component to support Urban Digital Twins Eco System

Vishnu Chandra, NIC India

Perspective

A digital twin is the combination of a computational model and real-world system designed to monitor, control and optimize its functionality. NIC is a System Integrating Organization, providing e- governance services and ICT infrastructure on demand at all levels of government from central to State & District level. End to end support is extended in terms of high bandwidth network, data centre, cloud based services, video conferencing and digitization of various government processes. Using Multi-Layer GIS platform “BHARATMAPS”, OGC compliant Geo-Spatial Services are embedded in e-governance workflows of various flagship programmes of government in various sectors, including urban governance and planning. In context of urban digital twins, ICT/GIS based Systems of Systems Approach is very critical to integrate data sets from various sectors of city governance. This covers API based integration of data services from multiple platforms, legacy systems as well as data from various IOT/Sensor based platforms. Currently, we are building end to end systems of systems for city governance with appropriated service oriented interoperable framework with a potential of getting scaled up to Urban Digital Twins Eco-System.

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Geology Digital Twins are fundamental for Sustainable Construction

Jason Errey, Clever Planning with Geology (CPG)

Perspective

Legacy Geotechnical and Geophysical systems used for Construction will only ever leave the Owner and Non-owner Project Initiation, Planning, Construction and Asset Management Teams with a never-ending series of "Known Unknowns" with respect to the Asset Geology. These "Known Unknowns", are the root of consequential Cost overruns and Time delays in the Construction and Asset Management Phases of the Lifecycle of any Projects developed on a particular Owner Asset Geology, whether those Projects be Greenfields or Brownfields Projects. This paper discusses the first application of the Geology Digital Twin to the spectrum of Projects, from The Torrens Title at the smallest end, to National or Global Infrastructure Megaprojects at the largest end of the spectrum of complexity. Application of the Geology Digital Twin resolves the Megaproject Paradox due to Owner Asset Geology for any and all Projects ever conducted on that Owner Asset Geology by turning all Geology "Known Unknowns" into "Known Knowns".

P.S. Collecting the Geological Digital Twin during the initiation phase of a project is already cheaper than the collection of Legacy Geotechnical/Geophysical Studies. And this is before we count the added benefits of the Geological Digital Twin including productivity boost for the area covered, better understanding of present and future environmental concerns (contaminated lands, water tables etc), and targeted construction that results in a more cost-effective build and less sunk carbon.

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Integrated Digital Built Environment – embedding Urban Digital Twin through data standards and web services

Discussion Leader: Carsten Roensdorf, Ordnance Survey

Perspective

This breakout group focusses on the learnings and suggestions from the joint buildingSMART international and OGC working group published in a discussion paper in 2020. We believe that collaboration between the geospatial and the AEC domains is essential to provide a common understanding of built environment data and agree implementation patterns to facilitate the integration and interoperability of built environment data. We will briefly present possible implementation patterns and invite participants to either comment or develop these ideas.

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Helsinki Energy and Climate Atlas

Speaker: Jarmo Suomisto, Helsinki 3D+ Project Manager

Perspective

The Helsinki Energy and Climate Atlas is a web service produced with the city's semantic 3D model. Atlas contains a wide variety of information related to the energy. The service is open and freely available to all.

Video on YouTube

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What is a Digital Twin for City? - the Singapore Digital Twin example

Victor Khoo, Director, Survey and Geomatics Division Singapore Land Authority

Perspective

Driven by urban challenges and rapid digitalisation, many cities see the need to develop large-scaled comprehensive 3D city models as the Digital Twins for their cities. These Digital Twin can be used by the government and citizens in many areas including day-to-day operation, safety and security, risk management, resource management, infrastructure development, urban planning and smart city applications.

What is a Digital Twin for City? This is a relatively new concept. Many research groups are working to describe this concept. Is it similar to National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI)? Is it a digital platform or a portal? What are the components? What are the benefits? Coming from National Mapping and Cadastre perspective, the DT is a national fundamental dataset which require a well-established data capturing programme; a data management strategy and multiple use cases.

Hence, in this panel discussion, we will be discussing about the technologies and techniques related to the development and deployment of Digital Twins for cities.

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i-Urban Revitalization: Data Implementation for Consensus-formation

Tomohisa (Tom) Oishi, Senior Manager, Panasonic Corporation Life Solutions Company

Perspective

In Japan, we had created so many “3D City Model data” of each municipalities. For Panasonic, over 300 datasets of the municipalities, in the last 20 years, that counts to over 30% of all the major cities in Japan. With implementation of “3D City Model data”, we have developed various visualization tools for many local municipalities throughout Japan to consensus-formation in the field of urban planning. Especially, Panasonic has developed various tools with VR/AR and other digitalization technology.

However, the problem in Japan was that geometry-only 3D city model data with no semantics continued to be created. It might be much more effective for urban planning site to use the 3D city model data with semantics, to estimate and compare the population of some cities in the future and make a decision of the policy and investment for that cities.

In Japan, the adoption of the CityGML format will continue to progress with the promotion of "i-Urban Revitalization" by the Japanese national government since 2019. In the future, various players involved in Japanese city planning will use it for consensus-formation or business-development. Then it will be possible to approach the “Realization of digital twin" that the Japanese government and we are aiming for.

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i-Urban Revitalization: Sustainable Digital Twins for Sustainable Cities

Chikako Kurokawa, Urban Structure Visualization Promotion Organization / Asia Air Survey

Abstract

“i-Urban Revitalization (i-UR)” is an information infrastructure promoted by the Japanese government expected to facilitate spatial and numerical understanding in urban planning. The i-UR is not just a database, but it includes activities to ensure sustainable use. To ensure sustainability, i-UR works with existing data update frameworks and applies geospatial standards to improve interoperability. In addition, promoting activities for municipalities develop human resources and networks, and knowing what other municipalities are doing motivates them to use i-UR for data-driven urban planning.

This presentation will introduce the findings of work on i-UR.

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i-Urban Revitalization: Technical Challenges

Nobuhiro Ishimaru, USVPO

Abstract

i-Urban Revitalization (i-UR) is an information infrastructure integrating urban planning-specific semantics information and 3D geometry data based on CityGML Urban Planning ADE (Application Domain Extension) published by Japanese national government. The aim is to visualize and analyze the situation and problems of time-varying urban areas, formulate urban development plans, and encourage consensus-building among stakeholders. This presentation gives a brief introduction of i-UR related activities in Japan and touches on technical challenges of using CityGML for data-driven urban planning, especially data modeling to integrate and utilize time-series statistics and geospatial information.

Nobuhiro Ishimaru is a member of the International Commission in the Urban Structure Visualization Promotion Organization (USVPO) in Japan from 2019, and contributing i-Urban Revitalization (i-UR) activities as an expert of geospatial information standardization. He has over 15 years experience of standardization activities in the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), and has been currently serving as Charter member of OGC CityGML Standards WG, Co-chair of OGC Moving Features Standards WG, as well as Advisor of Japan National Committee for ISO/TC211.

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Real-Time use cases of digital twins for unlocking emerging tech

Discussion Leader: Ilan Penn, Fantasmo

Abstract

This discussion will focus on the types of applications that can leverage digital twins in real-time today and the applications that will leverage the same technology in an ever changing world in the future.

Fantasmo is a foundational layer that many smart city applications require in order to proliferate. Today, Fantasmo's solutions are being scaled with micromobility operators, but that same platform is useful for autonomous systems, accessibility, augmented reality, IoT, and smart buildings. Digital twins alone are not enough to bring these next generation spatial applications into the real world. Fantasmo's digital twin solutions not only enable standard simulation and monitoring but are used in real-time by emerging applications to position themselves with sub-meter accuracy both indoors and out in order to solve critical obstacles.

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Towards a Future Connected City

Sean Audain, City Innovation Lead, Wellington City Council, New Zealand

Abstract

The creation of City Scale Digital Twins represents the next generation of the digitalisation of City Governments and urban economic sectors such as construction, transportation and utilities. For the past five years Wellington, the capital of New Zealand has been engaged in this journey of growing the city’s digital twin capability. This journey, though far from complete, has allowed the city to develop and test City Digital Twin components to address challenges as varied as conservation, earthquakes, pandemics, social harm reduction, accessible design and construction. Through these uses the Council has been able to understand the advantages, challenges, organisational capabilities and investment paths presented by a much deeper digitalisation and spatialization of public service, and how digital can be mobilised to create and reinforce effective, enduring relationships. Cities are the largest, most enduring and complex structures created by people – and their digital tiwns will be similarly complex. Given the challenges in our common future with climate change, economic restructuring and shifting social expectations it will be vital that these digital estates can grow in a way which allows for the changing role, functions and needs of institutions, actors and citizens.

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Shaping the urban fabric via city-scale Digital Twins

Phil Christensen, VP Reality + Spatial Modeling, Bentley Systems

Abstract

The physical fabric of an urban environment has a profound effect on the quality of life of its residents. Digital twins developed and maintained at city-scale hold out the promise of being extremely valuable in helping to evolve the physical fabric of urban areas so that it is more sustainable and resilient while continuing to foster prosperity. But what are city digital twins exactly, how do we get started in creating them, and how to we evolve and apply them in ways that deliver tangible benefits to residents in both the short and long term. This presentation will look at some of the foundational data principles of city digital twins, explore some examples of their application from cities in Asia and Europe, and look to what the future might hold for more automated creation and evolution of urban digital twins.

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Rotterdam 3D; a base for the future city

Jane Hermans-van Ree, Municipality Rotterdam

Abstract

In my presentation I will discuss the Rotterdam vision on the future city in which three different dimensions will form a new balance; the physical, social and digital dimensions of a city. The digital dimension will not be created separate to the city as we know it now but it will be an equal part of it. This transformation is already happening all around us, the digital dimension already interferes with both other dimensions. For example air-bnb and parcel delivery already effects the use of our city and of course social media is already connecting the digital world with our social lives.

In line of the above mentioned vision, the city of Rotterdam is creating a digital urban open platform containing a three dimensional copy of the city. In my presentation I will discuss the above briefly. After that I will discuss the three dimensional copy of the city, which will form the base of the urban platform. Rotterdam 3D, will contain all static objects of the city including objects in the subsurface. I will discuss the program and the base principles we apply creating it and show some examples.

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Digital Twins: Making Like Better For Communities

Stephen Levin, New York City Council Member

Abstract

My presentation will review how as a Councilmember from Brooklyn I became involved in supporting GIS. I will describe my advocacy of efforts to map New York’s underground. I will also discuss the legislation I’ve introduced calling for the appointment of a NYC GIO, a GIS steering committee and the development of a GIS strategic plan.

As we enter the Digital Twin era, as befits an elected official, I am chiefly interested in how this technology will benefit people, making life safer, healthier and more prosperous. I will describe a number of applications that ensure basic building services, monitor air quality, reduce vehicle accidents, diagnose health problems, and support infrastructure planning and management. I note the importance of helping non-technical leaders to understand Digital Twins so they can be better advocates for this extraordinary technology.

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Overview of the Location Powers: Urban Digital Twins Summit

George Percivall, OGC CTO

Abstract

This presentation begins with the objective and history of OGC's Location Powers Summits. The summits, bring together industry, research, government experts from globe communities for interactive discussions that assess location technologies and applications. An objective is to to recommend technology innovation, standards development and applications with beneficial outcomes.

Digital Twins at Urban Scale will transform how cities are planned, built, and managed to better deliver services. The result will be more livable, inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable urban environments. Urban Digital Twins are being developed using geospatial information technology, such as City Models, Data Science, AI/ML; Cloud, Edge, IoT computing; and Predictive models. This summit will identify the need to develop multiple thematic Urban Digital Twins, e.g., Base, Energy, Water, Mobility, etc. The summit will sketch out how a system-of-systems integration of several digital twins will be accomplished to support decision making by urban leaders, managers and residents.

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Empowering cities with open regional data infrastructures

Antje Kunze, Virtual City Systems, Berlin/Germany

Abstract

Many cities are working on their Smart Cities initiatives and Digital Twin strategies: How to incorporate all dimensions to become a livable, prospective, and sustainable city. The challenge is that each city and region has its own initiatives and use cases - some focus more on planning, mobility, energy or socio-economic issues. These concepts cannot be generalized, or possible blueprints cannot be created that will work for everyone - from a large city to a small town or region. However, all can learn from each other's visions, best practices, and lessons learned.

The presentation will show some examples to move from concept to implementation and operation of digital infrastructures and what is needed to build an open regional data infrastructure. It will be shown that Digital Twins of cities based on semantic 3D city models and open regional data infrastructures are an essential foundation for understanding, designing, and solving complex challenges of our urban reality. It highlights how to support smaller cities and regions in particular that do not have the resources as larger cities by implementing and operating a digital twin and an open data infrastructure. How to transfer and replicate what has been learned from role models like Rotterdam, Helsinki, and Hamburg to smaller municipalities and regions and how to get started.

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Underground elements of Urban Digital Twins

    

Discussion leaders: Alan Leidner, GISMO and Josh Lieberman, OGC

Description:

This discussion will focus on the underground portion of Urban Digital Twins.

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How to realize the benefits of a City Digital Twin – Dublin’s Perspective

Jamie Cudden, Dublin City Council

Description

The Digital Twin concept is one of the latest buzzwords dominating the smart city hype cycle. A whole suite of marketing brochures are promising platforms and solutions that can transform cities and deliver transformative use cases in areas such as emergency response, transport, construction, telecoms, asset management, planning and citizen engagement to name but a few. However, is this enough to get the right level of political buy-in to justify investment at scale?

In this panel discussion I will outline Dublin’s journey on city digital twins, how we are applying the concept at a district level and building out a wider engagement model with industry as well as internal and external stakeholders. We have developed a number of 3D digital twins in particular and are comparing approaches. Our approach has been to prioritise use case development through the delivery of 3D data hacks and the open sourcing of high value 3D city datasets to encourage use case development and enhanced research outputs. A recent partnership with Microsoft and Bentley systems is exploring the benefits of building a 3D city ‘reality mesh’ and leveraging the power of the cloud to deliver an enhanced citizen planning engagement experience.

Some of the challenges experienced include the need to break down the barriers internally and externally to ensure better alignment on data sharing and use case benefits. A lack of agreement on the technical direction and investments required to support this at an organisation level is stalling progress. Understanding how to sell the digital twin concept internally to secure high- level political backing is a big challenge. There is no clear path to scale - so for now we will continue to promote a district approach prioritising high value use cases, building out awareness and increasing the level of buy in. www.smartdocklands.ie

Bio Jamie Cudden: Jamie leads Dublin City Council’s Smart City program – an award-winning innovation programme that is addressing city challenges through the application of new and emerging technology opportunities. Through this work he has delivered collaborations with world leading tech companies such as Google, Bentley, Softbank, Accenture, Microsoft, IBM and Intel.

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Building A Collaborative Environment Towards Urban Digital Twins

Siau Yong Ng, Singapore Land Authority

Abstract

The keynote will share the geospatial journey in Singapore towards urban digital twins through a collaborative environment under the Singapore Geospatial Masterplan to empower businesses, people and the government to use Geospatial to enhance decision-making, create opportunities and lead better lives.

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Connecting urban environments with IoT and Digital Twins

Miriam Berhane Russom, Azure IoT Microsoft

Abstract

The concept of digital twins—a digital model and representation of real-world environment brought to life with real time data from sensors and other data sources—has entered the realm of smart cities and promises to enable city administrations and urban planners to make better decisions with the help of data integration and visualization from across the urban space. While urban planners have already been using 2D and 3D models and computer-aided design for years, the integration of real-time data from IoT devices, location, weather, traffic, people movement, and other sources has been a gamechanger for urban planning and operations. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/connecting-urban-environments-with-iot-and-digital-twins/

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Xavier Tay, Principal Consultant (Digital Twin) at Anacle Systems Ltd.

Abstract

Xavier has been implementing Virtual Simulation and Digital Twin projects for various industries for more than 10 years. It included successfully implemented Virtual Simulation for Ministry of Defence & education sectors, and Digital Twin projects for Facilities Management System, Retail management System and Data Center Infrastructure Management.

He has led a team to develop tools that allow conversion of BIM models into Digital Twin within a few days for Operation & Maintenance purposes. For those buildings without BIM, tools have been built to convert CAD drawings into 2.5D in less than an hour. Thus, allowing the industry to embark in the Digital Twin initiative in a quick and cost effective way. With these, Digital Team projects for hundreds of buildings have been implemented.

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Session 2W: Tech Depth and Applications

Session Chair: Robert Mankowski, Bentley
Session Rapporteur: Adam Martin, Esri

Description:

This session will explore the past, present, and future of the technology and applications required to build and use urban digital twins, and how they support decision making across a wide variety of use cases. Perhaps one could say that this session is about the technological underpinnings of “digital twinning” – a verb used to denote that this is not a clearly delineated event, but a continuous process of evolving digital twins to help inform decision makers with timely and accurate data, analytics and simulations.

The urban environment is large, complex, and continuously changing. It spans indoor, outdoor, above and below-ground, and has a dizzying number of planned and unplanned changes coming from an unbounded set of sources. Important decisions impacting the city are made every day by a diverse set of stakeholders – everyone from politicians and engineers, utility operators and urban planners, to the citizens that live, work, and play in the city. These decisions happen in the context of what the city is now but also what the city will be in the future.

Contemporary decision making is highly dependent on many different types of data, coming from many different sources, and increasingly much of it is geospatial. Fusion of this information has become an everyday necessity, but the reality in the geospatial industry is striking. While recent advances in information management and the increased capability of both sensing and communications technologies have made it easier than ever before to digitally replicate objects, processes and systems found in the physical world, in other words, to create digital twins, the state of the practice is that data typically exists in isolated silos, in disparate data formats, using different and often conflicting vocabularies, in structured and unstructured repositories, and at different levels of detail and resolution.

Join this session to hear from the digital twin technology leaders in academia and industry that are working to overcome these challenges, to understand better the position of Digitals Twins with respect to SDI and Smart Cities and see how adopters of urban digital twins are improving outcomes for resilience, sustainability, and quality of life.

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Collaboration Models for Academia, Government and Corporations

Leader: Sean Ahern, CUNY - Hunter College

Description:

The knowledge ecosystem of the Geospatial Technology community can be thought of as a four-legged stool with government, academia, the private sector and NGOs (specifically OGC) composing each leg. The question is: are we maximizing the synergies among these four sectors? OGC in many ways is the glue that holds our domain together with the creation of a unifying set of standards and an international forum for the exchange of ideas; academia searches for new approaches to modeling and problem solving and trains the future workforce; corporations provide specific solutions to geospatial problems and the systems/tool-boxes to do so; government has the mission-critical functions of planning, management and implementation. This session explores the issues and models that could help to optimize the synergies among all four institutions and strengthen the Geospatial Technology Domain and its knowledge ecosystem.

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DAFNI: a Hub to Support Infrastructure Research

Brian Matthews, DAFNI Project Lead, STFC

Description:

Modern infrastructure systems are highly complex, with many components and cross-system interactions between different domains and with the natural environment. DAFNI – Data and Analytics Facility for National Infrastructures is designed to support researchers and partners in industry and government handle this increased complexity and scale, We give a description of the aims of the DAFNI programme. We consider further how it can support the challenge of an ecosystem of digital twins as a hub for sharing data and models in an environment. DAFNI can bring these together and combine them into new workflows, to explore new solutions for infrastructure development and deplotment.

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