City development is evolving, and virtual twins are at the forefront of this transformation. By creating virtual replicas of urban environments, city planners and developers can simulate scenarios, analyze data and make more informed decisions. This technology holds the potential to optimize infrastructure, enhance sustainability, and improve the quality of life for urban residents.
But how exactly do these models work, and why are they essential for smart city development?
Understanding the impact of virtual twins on city development
Virtual twins are digital representations of physical spaces and their components, from a singular building to a whole city. They gather real-time data from Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, GIS mapping and building information modeling (BIM) systems to create a comprehensive virtual model of a city or urban environment.
The true power of a virtual twin lies in its ability to simulate real-world scenarios, serving as a dynamic testing ground for planners. It can analyze traffic patterns to optimize road networks, identifying congestion points and suggesting alternative routes to improve flow. Urban planners can evaluate energy efficiency by simulating energy consumption across neighborhoods and testing the impact of renewable energy solutions. A virtual twin can also predict the potential impacts of natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods and hurricanes, allowing cities to prepare evacuation plans and allocate resources more effectively. Additionally, this kind of virtual replica of an urban space can enable real-time monitoring and management of urban infrastructure, detecting issues like water leaks or power outages before they escalate into major problems.
City planning with and without virtual twins
To truly appreciate the value of virtual twins, it’s important to understand both the challenges cities face without them and the benefits realized after their integration.
Before virtual twins
The traditional methodology for undertaking urban development projects follows a trial-and-error approach. Data is collected, but it’s often fragmented and requires manual piecing together to be usable. Initiatives are carried out using some historical data, though by no means all available data, and policies are enacted with a good faith effort to produce something that might achieve original aims. Without a unified planning, modeling and simulation system, urban planning projects of any size are at risk of non-optimal outcomes that are more easily achievable when addressed using accessible and applicable technologies.
With virtual twins
With a virtual twin, everything looks different. By taking a more scientific approach, responsible parties can make responsible decisions, backed by data and the knowledge of potential outcomes tested in a simulation.
It’s possible to optimize land use by balancing the density of city skyscrapers with necessary green spaces, to monitor metrics like air quality and implement virtually-tested solutions and assess natural disaster risks and create contingency plans to mitigate them. Virtual twins don’t just add a layer of certainty to urban planning operations – they make the outcomes of such urban simulation projects safer for citizens, too.
Integrating virtual twins with urban planning processes
While some of the benefits of implementing virtual twins for urban planning are obvious – centralized and accessible data, simulation capabilities, etc. – others aren’t as clear-cut. Citizen engagement is one such perk that’s made more achievable by implementing this tech. In some cities where virtual twins have been created, like Rennes, city planners invited residents to a physical space where they could explore and interact with the twin and see the city’s proposed changes.
Virtual twins can make city planning more transparent. By creating interactive visualizations, stakeholders, including residents and local government representatives alike, can better understand proposed developments and provide timely feedback. This can enhance public participation and help build trust between citizens and local governments.
Additionally, virtual twins can foster collaboration by creating platforms where citizens can actively contribute to the planning process. For instance, in Rennes, city planners made the virtual twin open to the public in the physical forum they constructed. This way, residents were able to see visual representations of proposed changes and better understand the impact they’d have.
Will a new housing project cause changes to a commonly used bus route? How will property taxes impact small business owners in neighborhoods? Incorporating the citizen perspective on these issues and more enables politicians, planners, developers and other municipal leaders to make better decisions. This approach not only encourages inclusivity but also ensures that diverse perspectives are taken into account, leading to more equitable and community-focused solutions. By empowering residents to be part of the conversation, virtual twins bridge the gap between planners and the community, making urban development a truly participatory process.
Challenges and solutions in virtual twin adoption
While virtual twins hold immense promise, their adoption is not without challenges. Some common roadblocks include the initial up-start costs, data integration processes and skill gaps between actual and necessary technical knowledge. And while not all obstacles are preventable, these all have solutions that make building and using virtual twins feasible, even for smaller operations.
To deal with the issue of cost, city officials can allocate a budget that allows for a phased approach, piloting smaller projects to demonstrate the return on investment before scaling to larger initiatives. Skill gaps can be closed through continuing education programs and initiatives like Centers of Excellence, which provide learning opportunities for professionals to equip them with the necessary knowledge to thrive in a constantly changing market.
Unsurprisingly, the prospect of relying on technology for sensitive municipal projects and initiatives poses a litany of security concerns. This challenge, though, isn’t impossible to overcome. For city planners, ensuring the technologies they employ for urban planning projects are cybersafe is of utmost importance. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform enacts a variety of measures to protect the virtual twins that reside on it against cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Data integrated into the platform is validated and anomaly detection mechanisms are implemented to identify and mitigate attempts at data poisoning. The platform also has strong access controls, secure data transmission and storage methods and regular updates and patches to protect against threats. These layers of security ensure that virtual twins built on the platform and the data fed into them are secure.
The future of smarter cities
The rise of virtual twins for cities is revolutionizing the way urban areas are planned, managed and optimized. By using a unified platform to host their twin, city leaders can centralize vast amounts of data from multiple sources, collaborate more effectively across departments and respond to challenges with greater agility and precision. These solutions help simulate various scenarios, from traffic flow and energy use to disaster response, enabling cities with informed decision-making. The result is not only improved city operations but also a better quality of life for residents, fostering healthier, more livable communities.
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.