Fountaindale School Event

By Moss Mitson, Youth Engagement Coordinator & Media

Definitely not a usual day, for us at Digital Urban but also for the students of Fountaindale - a specialised special school for children with sensory/physical needs. The DU team went along for the day with some Virtual Reality experiences for the students to try, these included a magic carpet ride and a wildflower experience.

Throughout the day all the different classes attended, from the youngest of 3 all the way up to 18 years old. Some students were apprehensive at all the new kit and people in their school, others jumped in feet first. Different children participated to a different level, for some they were mesmerised by the Virtual Reality, for others just the sensory experience of the vibrating seat was what they enjoyed.

Julia Bullock, a teacher at the school, described many of the students at the school as having life limiting conditions, and for some their needs are such that their world is fairly small. Having been given the opportunity to expand that, if only a little, was a real privilege.

I enjoyed seeing the relationship the teachers had with their students. With the children who didn't communicate verbally it was a case of reading their body language and the teachers obviously had built up amazing relationships with their students and could read when the students wanted to try again, or when they were giving signs they had had enough. Often the trust built up between teachers and students meant while being unsure about a headset being put on by a strange stranger from Digital Urban, they would let their trusted teacher give it a go.

We learnt a lot in running the experience. As well as running the VR with people who communicate differently, we also learnt a different metric of success. For most of our events success looks like conversations being started and gaining detailed feedback off the back of a VR event, for example with local authorities or schools. However for this day success looked like children having come away having seen or tried something new. 

We thought about our experiences from purely an accessibility view, how could this VR experience be enjoyed from a wheelchair? How to make the vibrations from the magic carpet available for anyone to feel? We came away from this day brimming with ideas, feeling like we were opening up a new avenue for us to explore. Ideas of how we would run things even better should we get this opportunity again.

VR opens up the possibilities for a world to be anything we can think of. This experience opened up the world a little for the students who participated, and it opened ours up too.

Digital City Awards 2022

By Simon Mabey, Director

And the winner is…….

I wonder how many times has that been said at the Oscars or any awards ceremony or even at this month’s Winter Olympics

How often do we excited nominees or Olympic Medallists brace themselves for that moment and the sheer excitement of hearing your name mentioned?

I remember seeing London being unveiled for the 2012 Summer Olympics and the jubilant nationwide celebrations that followed and it was great to feel part of something special even though it was 7 years to the opening ceremony!

We are therefore thrilled that we have the chance to have those same butterflies in my stomach as Digital Urban has been nominated for the Digital City Awards and we are excited to be listed in the Digital Transformation category

These prestigious awards recognise those teams that are using technology to build a better future and we passionately believe that our company is revolutionising how we view our towns and cities by creating Digital Twins that will help to create better places for our communities.

One such example has been the development of a 3D model for the Wirral council's Birkenhead 2040 Regeneration Framework and like in the Olympics we like to root for an underdog and so we are proud to have helped a northern town fighting to compete with the big cities

Using the model, Wirral is transforming how it looks at and deals with its planning process and the transformation in approach allows better visualisation of the proposed changes in Birkenhead and enhancing stakeholder engagement.

In order to help us achieve and deliver Wirral's vision, our strategy was to capture the essence of the Birkenhead and depict that in a ground breaking digital format which allows Wirral Borough Council to envision the future while retaining its proud history. We also wanted to lay the foundations for the ongoing development of the digital twin to allow council to modernise their review and decision making approach.

We had a challenge throughout the project and literally took to the skies over Birkenhead to achieve the most accurate results and so Digital Urban chartered a flight to capture high resolution aerial photography of the required area. The photography is processed and converted into 3D maps using a process known as photogrammetry.

As a result of our efforts the Wirral is well on its way to creating a digital twin of the borough and the council felt that the project was instrumental in helping them achieve their target for regeneration funding of around £40m.

This award would help demonstrate the progress that has made and encourage other towns to join Wirral's lead.

Digital Urban is on a mission to revolutionise the planning process in the UK and It’s been an exciting journey for the team to this point and the digital city award for innovation would help to further validate the success the company has achieved to date.

Like all competitors ( unlike Eddie the Eagle who was a national hero without being a winner) we can’t wait for the envelope to be opened and to hear whether we have been successful in the Digital City Awards. However our team aren’t just on a mission to win prizes and gongs as winning the hearts and minds of the residents and stakeholders in the towns of the Wirral could be considered a greater accolade.

That’s said I have secretly started to imagine our team walking on to the stage at the awards as after all its great to dare to dream….

Empowered by Technology

By Simon Mabey, Director

Its often said you never forget your time at school.

My abiding memory of my time is spending my English lesson sitting in a drafty corridor working one to one with a volunteer teacher who would be frustrated at my struggles to read.

I was dyslexic.

Reading and spelling did not come easy to me, and my children also inherited this, and I am pleased to report that teaching strategies are far removed from my school days testified by my children all passed English first time whereas I failed 3 times!

Struggling with reading and writing in your formative years does truly impact and shape your confidence in many ways and for me it was typified by the fact that I would carry lots of cash with me as I dreaded writing cheques and was embarrassed to ask how to spell numbers!

My saviour is that technology has empowered me and driven my career despite the early setbacks as it’s well documented that dyslexics have excellent spatial awareness and in my first job in the late 80’s working in 3D I was able to put this to the test.

In only my first month in the role I was working alongside architects, writing 3D parametrics and modelling proposed tall buildings for central London and plotting all the drawings and producing photomontages.

When I started work, computers cost up to £50k and fondly remember that we had to write much of the tools ourselves to achieve this and quite a lot of time preparing how I would spend my time on the shared computer.

Fast forwarding to the present day and we are still using technology to empower, whether that’s working remotely developing our 3D modelling team or presenting their 3D work to citizens to help them to understand proposed changes.

Its pleasing to see that technology can be used to build confidence and be an empowering experience unlike my indelible memories of the hallways of my primary school.

Within our team we even see the posture change from the early beginning of setting small daily tasks with weekly goals right through to their own learning and sharing knowledge as part of a flourishing team.

Town planning, urban design (architecture and engineering) isn’t always seen as an option, its often a career choice for those who know about the profession because they have a personal experience from a friend or family. But at Digital Urban we are making it our mantra to attract wider interest into the profession, It’s the career of choice if you want to make a major impact on our environment and landscape so it should be diverse and inclusive.

Lifelong learning makes us human and every day we continue to develop our team, we strive to educate our clients (who also educate us) on the ongoing use and application of digital urban models, our client use their digital models to empower the public, helping them to make more informed choices on the future of their towns and the residents of Birkenhead can see the exciting opportunities for their town. (Voiceover by Chloe at the Hive youth club)

I will never forget my time at school nor how far technology has taken me on my lifelong journey.

How Digital Twinning Can Help Towns Level Up

By Simon Mabey, Director

The government has made much of it plans to “level up” British cities, but many of the practicalities of this are unclear. To improve urban centres, local authorities need the tools to visualise current conditions and predict the impact of future changes. This is easy for large cities with the budgets to match, but many councils have been left looking for affordable ways to plan ambitious projects.

Could digital twinning provide the answer?

Levelling Up

The levelling up agenda was developed in response to economic and social inequalities. Many parts of the UK feel left behind, without the wealth seen in London and the south-east. Under levelling up, investment has been promised for towns and cities outside that region, as well as greater local control over how money is spent.

Connected to this is talk about the collapse of the high street. Changes in the way we shop, work, and socialise have triggered a decline in town and city centre businesses. The coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout has accelerated that process.

This has placed an onus on city and borough councils to renew urban centres. With more money comes more responsibility. Ways must be found to bring customers and employers back into the heart of the urban sprawl. Transport networks need to be developed to improve connections and encourage growth.

Given the origins of the phrase “levelling up” in computer games, it is fitting that one of the tools supporting this agenda is also driven by games technology.

What is Digital Twinning?

Digital twinning is the creation of a virtual 3D version of a town or city, based on real life data. Planners, developers, and construction companies can use this model to explore the town, examining it from all sorts of angles, observing how processes work within the urban environment and how that environment would respond to changes, such as new buildings, altered transport networks, or demographic shifts.

Visualisation is central to digital twinning. Looking at a map provides some sense of how a town is shaped in theory, but a 3D model lets you see how it works in practice. Where are the lines of sight, the traffic bottlenecks, the still or busy places?

How would all that change if a shopping centre was built or a tram line added?

Digital twinning creates a 3D snapshot of a town as it is now, and through that a window into possible futures.

Not Just for Big Cities

The tools to do this have existed for years, thanks to live data and 3D modelling, but the time and costs involved were often prohibitive. Now, the software engines that drive multi-million-dollar games can be brought to bear on even more expensive projects: the development of entire towns.

The highest profile examples have been cities like Singapore and Lucerne, which have incorporated digital twinning into their planning processes. But such large and wealthy settlements are outliers. It is smaller towns that demonstrate the widespread value of digital twinning.

“Birkenhead is changing,” explains Cathy Wignall, Regeneration Delivery Lead at Wirral Council, “and we need to set out the scope of our ambition and for the residents and the stakeholder and central government to understand the scale of our ambition. The use of 3D modelling provided by Digital Urban has proved to be an ideal way of bringing this vision to reality and to life.”

The model in question covers nine square kilometres of Birkenhead, a town within the Wirral. Consolidating proposed changes from a range of different sources, it presents a concrete vision of what the town will look like in 2040. Residents can see, understand, and engage with the changes. Companies can make investments, knowing what the town will look like.

In some ways, it is a remarkable step to take, creating a digital planning tool for a town of only 89,000 residents. But with 3D visualisation available in every living room through games consoles, it makes sense to tap into it for grander ends. Companies like Digital Urban have made this technology available at a scale suitable for town and borough councils.

Birkenhead is not likely to feature in the next Assassins Creed, but by tapping into the same technology, it will get to level up.

How Virtual Realities Build Better Towns: The Case for Digital Twinning

By Simon Mabey, Director

Change is risky and expensive, two words that neither local authorities nor property developers and investers want to hear. Unfortunately for them, it is also a necessity in regenerating high streets and building more sustainable towns. It is an essential part of meeting the UK government “levelling up” agenda. Fortunately, a new take on towns and cities cuts both the costs and the dangers.

It is time to unleash the power of digital twinning.

What is Digital Twinning?

 A digital twin is a virtual 3D replica of a place, based on data drawn from reality. It creates a digitised copy of the town or city and can even be connected to live data feeds. This allows planners to examine the city and its processes, from traffic flows to rubbish disposal to demographic shifts.

The visual element of digital twins is not just window dressing. Smart towns already gather data and do much of the modelling, but it is the visual component that brings twins to life. It presents massive amounts of information in a way humans can easily process.

As well as looking at the current state of a town, a digital twin lets planners look ahead. They can feed in data from predictive analytics to explore what will happen next or model alterations to the current situation, safely experimenting with a towns’ future.

The tools for digital twinning have existed for years, in the form of live data and 3D modelling, but the barrier to entry was high. It took a prohibitive amount of time, effort, and technical skill to create a digital twin. Now, software engines built for games have brought digital twinning within reach, with cities like Shanghai and Lucerne already incorporating it into their planning processes.

Why Use Digital Twinning?

 The benefits to towns of digital twins are clear: urban planners can experiment with changes in a controlled environment, where their plans will not affect real people. Digital twins highlight problems, present opportunities, and allow experimentation at a fraction of the cost of real changes.

One common use is traffic management. Planners can examine traffic flows, look for problem areas, experiment with changes to junctions and signals, and model the impact of developments such as new shopping centres.

Other systems can also be modelled, from rubbish collection to demographic shifts to air quality. Within the safe confines of a computer model, new policies and construction plans can be put to the test.

The 3D visualisation of digital twins is particularly valuable when considering new buildings. It can be hard to imagine a building’s impact on the skyline or how its users will affect the local area. A digital twin takes users into an altered version of the town  complete with that new building. In Adelaide, it has allowed planners to experiment with lines of sight in ways that maps, and plans could never do.

Digital twinning is not just for urban authorities. Strategic Property Partners have used it to model developments in Tampa, showing real views around the heart of the city and creating not just insight but excitement around development plans. Shanghai has one of the most advanced models, created for a developer and the local government. It is being used for traffic flow, bridge maintenance, and disaster planning, allowing the city to build for the best and prepare for the worst.

Uptake of digital twinning is benefiting from much reduced costs as technology improves. aThe modest costs are a fraction of the expense and inconvenience that results from poor planning.  We have seen examples closer to home in both Birkenhead and Watford where digital twinning has been well received by residents who are keen to watch the videos of their town of the future on social media. It is also a powerful way to share information between stakeholders and engage people in the planning process. Block by Block, a UN project backed by Microsoft and Mojang, gives local communities input on their built environments, using Minecraft as a tool to replicate real spaces.

From planning traffic flows to engaging citizens, digital twinning opens a world of possibilities not least the future of digital twins as a flexible tool to assist authorities in the day-to-day management of their activities. Architectures and planners can experiment like never before and build better towns and cities for tomorrow.