The Record - Issue 18: Autumn 2020

162 www. t e c h n o l o g y r e c o r d . c om A s your city continues to grapple with operating during the pandemic, you may be making the necessary changes to support social distancing and working from home. While preparing for the post-pandemic new normal, you may also be looking for ways to reinvent how you work. Some cities are increasingly focused on smart city initiatives, infrastructure resilience strategies and opera- tional performance for buildings, campuses and utilities. Some are investing in access to cloud services and open initiatives, as well as exploring digital twins and the Internet of Things (IoT) to improve infrastructure and deliver services. Digital advancement initiatives are increasing in priority to help stimulate economic growth, cre- ate efficiencies and support smart city initiatives. Imagine a 3D city model that helps you improve decisions, planning and stakeholder engagement. It’s now possible to have a top-down and bot- tom-up approach for stakeholder decision sup- port and engagement. Although some of these city models are beautiful visuals, your model can be a digital twin that works as a collaborative platform, providing improved visualisation and communication, increased citizen engagement, improved planning, and reduced delays. Here are six potential benefits of a digital twin: Stream large-scale digital twins online to visualise projects – Span entire cities and go down to the street level with a combination of terrain models, reality meshes and semantic 3D city models. Fast-track your planning decisions – Get your key stakeholders more engaged in decision-mak- ing and help limit planning and execution errors by creating a shared project vision. Although building a city-scale digital twin may sound dif- ficult, it is very simple to include your data, build scenarios and engage your internal stakeholders to create the best plan and project. Get everyone quickly engaged and fast-track approval processes. Engage the public and create a feedback loop – Help everyone better understand the impact of plans and projects, potentially improving safety and helping avoid commuting congestion near project sites. With a digital twin workflow, you can provide a fast, easy and visual way to inter- actively communicate, promote and share city projects to successfully gain citizen buy-in and attract investors. Provide digital experiences like web, mobile, touchscreen or even wearables. By performing crowdsourcing of your planning and Create your single view of truth for resilient city infrastructure Digital advancement initiatives are increasing in priority to stimulate economic growth T E R E S A E L L I OT : B ENT L E Y S Y S T EMS V I EWPO I NT “Imagine a 3D city model that helps you improve decisions, planning, and stakeholder engagement”