Mapping a new town with 3D digital twin technology

Skytech Cambridge has captured more than 40,000 high-resolution aerial photographs to put a new housing development on the map in the UK. The company then used the images to build a true-to-scale 3D digital model and 2D map of the area. This has overcome the problem of the freely available imagery being years out of date, and now shows the true scale of the new town under construction.

Northstowe is one of the most significant new towns in Cambridgeshire. Planned as a long-term growth area on and around the former RAF Oakington airfield, it is intended to deliver thousands of new homes, as well as schools, community facilities, green space and transport links.

Understanding what is happening on site

Progress on the ground has been closely watched. The town has already attracted national attention as one of the initial sites chosen for a new government taskforce to accelerate stalled housing. That focus on delivery makes it even more important to understand what is actually happening on site, not just what is shown on historic satellite imagery or in planning documents.

Yet rapid build-out creates its own problem: by the time new houses, roads and open spaces appear on traditional mapping, they may already have changed again. For planners, developers and infrastructure partners, that lag makes decision-making harder than it needs to be.

In fact, on existing standard web maps, large parts of the town either didn’t exist or appeared as bare ground – even though hundreds of families were already living in new streets, with more phases well underway.

40,000 aerial images covering 650 acres

Skytech Cambridge therefore set out to create a living, accurate representation of Northstowe as it exists today. The objective was not simply to capture images, but to build a digital foundation that reflects the town’s current reality and can evolve alongside its development.

To achieve this, the team surveyed the entire 615-acre site of current development, covering all completed housing phases, schools, local centres, primary roads and the surrounding open landscape. By flying at a consistent altitude and maintaining precise image overlap, Skytech Cambridge captured more than 40,000 high-resolution aerial photographs across the town, ensuring uniform coverage and reliable data quality.

The images were then processed using advanced photogrammetry techniques to reconstruct a detailed true-to-scale 3D digital model of Northstowe’s buildings, streets and landscape. In parallel, a high-resolution 2D orthomosaic was generated – a single, seamless map that can be measured accurately and used as a robust base layer for analysis and planning.

Crucially, all data is fully georeferenced. This allows the 3D model and 2D map to integrate seamlessly with existing GIS datasets, CAD drawings and planning information, providing planners and project teams with a shared, reliable view of the town – without the need for assumptions or manual alignment.

Browser-based digital twin

The result is a browser-based digital twin of Northstowe that anyone involved in the project can access on a standard device – no specialist software required.

In 3D, users can orbit, pan and zoom across the town to see the whole settlement at once. Roof forms, building heights, street layouts and relationships between new neighbourhoods are all clear at a glance.

In 2D, the orthomosaic provides a crisp, up-to-date basemap for more technical work. Planners and consultants can overlay red lines, infrastructure corridors, land ownership boundaries, transport proposals or environmental constraints, confident that the ground image beneath is current rather than several years old. This combination of 3D and 2D data is far more informative than a handful of static site photos or an outdated satellite view.

As of summer 2025, around 1,750 homes in the town were occupied, and all of them are now visible and measurable in the model.