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.