Urban areas are growing rapidly, and with growth comes an increasing need to manage complex infrastructure more effectively. Enter urban infrastructure virtual twin solutions—a cutting-edge approach to city management that blends virtual simulations with real-world data.
But what exactly are virtual twins, and how are they shaping the smart cities of tomorrow? Let’s unpack this revolutionary concept and see how it’s redefining urban planning, development and sustainability.
Urban infrastructure meets virtual twin solutions
At its core, a virtual twin is a virtual representation of a real-world system. It’s an amped-up version of its predecessor, the digital twin. Virtual twins aren’t just a digitized version of a product or service. They’re a virtual model that includes the entire environment that product or service is in, including all the processes that feed into it or depend on it. It’s a much more dynamic tool than a digital twin technology can offer. Urban infrastructure virtual twin solutions take this concept and apply it to cities, creating highly detailed virtual models of infrastructure like roads, utilities, transportation networks and buildings. This kind of virtual model uses real-time data and analytics to monitor, simulate and predict how systems operate, enabling smarter decision-making.
Why are virtual twins so significant for urban planning and management? Cities face a laundry list of challenges, including traffic congestion, aging utilities, limited resources and increasing demand for public services. Virtual twins help city planners and managers address these issues by identifying inefficiencies, predicting future trends and optimizing operations. For instance, they can simulate how a new transit line will impact traffic patterns or forecast how different weather conditions will affect power grids.
Perhaps most impressively, virtual twins integrate seamlessly with existing systems in any given urban environment. They pull data from IoT devices, sensors and other technologies already in place, making adoption both practical and efficient. Increasingly, both virtual twins and the technologies that are fed into them use artificial intelligence, adding a layer of innovation to this system. This means cities don’t need to start from scratch; they can build on what they already have, managing everything from traffic congestion to public services to citizen engagement in a singular location.
Renewing infrastructure with innovative software
What sets virtual twins apart from other tools for city management?
The breadth and depth of the challenges they can be used for make them a necessary component of any infrastructure optimization project.
From revitalizing urban spaces and public transportation systems to streamlining waste management to reducing air pollution, a virtual twin can both improve a city’s infrastructure and enable cost-saving measures. Take, for example, the economic impact of deploying a digital twin for the digital transformation of water management. By identifying leaks or inefficiencies in water distribution networks, cities save millions annually while ensuring a consistent water supply for residents and businesses alike. Or, consider bridges: this piece of critical infrastructure is extremely vulnerable thanks to its exposure to the weather and the impact that rain, wind, earthquakes and more can cause. Construction on bridges can be precarious, and precision is of the utmost importance. Deploying a virtual twin through CATIA enabled the Shanghai Municipal Engineering Design Institute to execute the construction of a complex, data-backed bridge in Nanjing, a provincial capital in China, home to more than 6 million residents.
Simulation capabilities, baked into virtual twins, are kind of a dream come true for urban planners when it comes to urban design and construction. They allow for the testing of various scenarios, making them all more realistic by both real-time data fed into them and predictive analytics that can be deduced from them. They make it possible to analyze, assess, and enact changes as they happen, adding agility to infrastructure management, sustainable urban development, and everything in between.
The benefits of this kind of technology are hard to overstate. They equip decision-makers with actionable insights, leading to smarter management and better outcomes for residents. On an operational level, virtual twins enhance efficiency by identifying system inefficiencies. Economically, they can be a money-saver by reducing maintenance costs, optimizing resource allocation and extending the lifespan of infrastructure. One study from the Big 4 firm KPMG even found that for every dollar invested in a digital twin solution, there is a return of nine dollars in savings. Hard to argue with that.
What problems do virtual twins solve for infrastructure?
While virtual twins may sound futuristic, they’ve already made tangible impacts across the globe. Consider the Virtual Singapore project, which produced a comprehensive virtual twin of the city. This initiative, completed through a partnership with Dassault Systèmes, enables urban planners to model energy consumption, improve traffic flow and design climate-resilient buildings in the city-state. The Singapore project is now a blueprint for how urban digital twins can enhance sustainability and livability.
Virtual Rennes, much like Virtual Singapore, was another Dassault Systèmes project that aimed at enabling the French city to test how a new neighborhood should be mapped out. The twin included sensors fed with real-time data from multiple sources on air quality, sun exposure, shading and even wind patterns. This information enabled city officials to plan the neighborhood’s expansion using every piece of readily available information. Such information can be the first layer in ensuring future construction takes into account this type of information, while also working to reduce carbon footprints and construct projects with resource optimization at the top of mind.
The lesson here is clear. Implementing digital twins requires vision and investment, but the benefits are profound. Cities can improve infrastructure reliability, reduce costs and respond to challenges far more effectively.
Implementation challenges and solutions
One of the biggest challenges governments and private sector companies face in implementing virtual twins revolves around data. Data is a big hurdle: accurate, real-time data is necessary to power digital twins, but assembling and structuring it from disparate systems and sources isn’t easy. There’s also the issue of technical expertise. Developing and managing virtual twins requires skilled professionals, and as technologies evolve, maintaining an adequately skilled workforce can strain resources.
Fortunately, solutions to these challenges are emerging. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform removes some of the friction around data, collecting it from various sources and contextualizing it to make sure it’s usable. The platform’s ability to integrate various data types and sources means it’s an approachable program for cities and companies at all levels of technological maturity. On the skill side, cooperation between governments, universities and private sector companies – like Dassault Systèmes’ Centers of Excellence – provides a training ground for the next generation of workers to ensure they’re prepared for managing the current and coming generations of all manner of cutting-edge technologies.
Enhancing and optimizing urban infrastructure
How exactly do virtual twins enhance urban infrastructure?
For starters, they can be used to optimize the performance of existing systems. They give city managers the tools to see the full picture, enabling smarter, data-driven decisions. In Boston, AI-enhanced traffic lights do exactly that, surveying congestion on the road at a given time and adjusting settings to minimize it efficiently and safely. As urban populations swell and resource demands increase, it’s going to be more critical than ever for infrastructure management to be not only optimized but agile, too.
Virtual twins contribute significantly to sustainability as well. Support for sustainable innovations continues to grow, and more cities and companies are making the move to ensure their actions align with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, which include an initiative for sustainable cities. Utilizing available technology for this noble purpose only shows how enmeshed software with eco-conscious efforts can be doubly successful. By optimizing energy systems, reducing emissions and carefully managing resources, they align perfectly with the goals of smart city initiatives. A virtual twin of a power grid, for example, can pinpoint inefficiencies and accelerate the transition to renewable energy sources.
More broadly, virtual twins enable strategic, long-term urban planning. They have the potential not only to improve and optimize existing infrastructure but also to add a layer of resilience to it, too. From predicting the impacts of natural disasters to understanding the consequences of a piece of infrastructure’s physical location, usage rates and more, virtual tools make planning and recovery operations much, much easier. Gone are the days of looking at the condition of critical infrastructure in its current state, struggling to implement quick fixes and safe solutions. Governments and private sector companies alike can easily have the tools in hand they need to move beyond reactive management, shifting to proactive and predictive strategies that improve quality of life while minimizing costs.
Looking toward the virtual future
Urban infrastructure virtual twin solutions are transforming how cities are planned, managed and sustained. Creating virtual replicas of real-world systems offers unprecedented insights and control over urban infrastructure. They can be handily used to ensure that safety and sustainability are injected into every initiative, promising enhanced services alongside low environmental impacts, new infrastructure changes that can withstand natural disasters, governmental projects with greater efficiencies.
Effective integration is essential to unlock these benefits. Cities need to prioritize interoperability between systems. This means ensuring IoT devices, sensors and other technologies work seamlessly with virtual twin platforms. By building robust partnerships with technology providers, cities can remain adaptable to future advancements.
With the right strategy, tools and training, virtual twins can signal a future where cities are not only smarter but also more sustainable and resilient. The potential here is enormous, and the cities that embrace virtual twin technology will undoubtedly lead the way in the next chapter of urban innovation.
Shoshana is a Senior Communications Manager on the Corporate Publishing team here at Dassault Systèmes. With experience in journalism, marketing, and PR, her work has been published around the world and across the internet.