7 Digital Twin Articles All Chief Digital Officers Should Read

Today’s digital revolution is leading to a huge amount of geospatial data. A digital twin is a digital, three-dimensional copy of a real-life environment – e.g. a city, building, railway project or crop field – in which all available geospatial data is presented in a location-oriented and object-oriented manner. Here, we present a series of inspiring articles providing examples of how your organization could use a digital twin in practice. Bridging the Gap between Geospatial and Construction There is certainly a gap in information exchange between the geospatial and construction domains. This is a serious issue, mainly because geospatial systems... (read more)

2020-06-18 10:44:09

National Digital Twin for Decarbonizing UK's Building Stock

3DStock provides a better understanding of the UK's building stock in the transition to carbon neutrality. 3DStock is a method for modelling all buildings – domestic, non-domestic and mixed-use – in a locality, in three dimensions and located geographically. The primary purpose is the analysis of energy performance, but there are many other potential applications. It has been developed by the Building Stock Lab at UCL Energy Institute. Models have been built to date of 18 London boroughs and the towns and cities of Sheffield, Leicester, Swindon, Tamworth and Milton Keynes. Data is available for extending the modelling to England... (read more)

2020-06-18 10:05:17

Creating 5,000 Digital Twin Apartments with UAV-captured Imagery

In a Swedish project with Spotscale, photorealistic and intelligent 3D models of over 5,000 apartments based on high-resolution drone imagery will enable Riksbyggen to inspect, measure and analyse the buildings more efficiently. The project spans over 50 different housing areas of varying sizes, totaling more than 600 building bodies, containing over 5000 apartments all over Sweden. The underlying imagery, captured by drones, contains hundreds of thousands of high-resolution images that have been automatically processed into photorealistic and intelligent 3D models. Through a cloud-based solution, Riksbyggen can inspect, measure and analyse the buildings in a completely new way, thanks to advanced... (read more)

2021-01-06 11:42:20

The World's First Digital Twin of a Polar Research Ship

Powered by NavVis technology, reality capture specialist DiConneX has created a fully interactive digital twin of the 'Polarstern', an iconic German polar research ship. In September 2019, the 'Polarstern' icebreaker – the flagship vessel of the Alfred Wegener Institute – launched the most extensive research expedition ever to the Arctic: the multidisciplinary MOSAiC project. (This story contains a video) The MOSAiC project expedition aims to better understand the influence of the Arctic on the global climate. For the duration of the project, scientists from 17 nations will live together for over a year on the Polarstern. The ship will stand frozen... (read more)

2019-12-20 09:16:32

EU-funded Project to Develop Digital Twin of Pilsen

A precise 3D computer model or ‘digital twin’ is being created of Pilsen (‘Plzen’), a mid-sized city with a strong brewing heritage and a population of around 165,000 in the Czech Republic. The partly EU-funded DUET project, aimed at boosting major events and tourism in the area, is expected to take three years. Digital Urban European Twins According to Veronika Cholinská speaking on behalf of the city of Pilsen's IT department, the digital 3D city model will serve a variety of purposes. For example, the city expects to use the 3D model in spatial planning to visualize and assess the... (read more)

2020-01-20 10:03:07

Bentley Systems Becomes Founding Member of Digital Twin Consortium

Bentley Systems has elevated its participation in the Digital Twin Consortium by becoming a founding member. Having been a groundbreaker member since day one of the consortium’s launch in May 2020, Bentley - an infrastructure engineering software company - will now deepen its collaboration as a founding member and become a member of the consortium's steering committee. Defining digital twins One way that Bentley is helping advance the Digital Twin Consortium’s mission is through defining the terminology used to describe digital twins. Casey Mullen, distinguished architect, strategic technologies at Bentley Systems, has contributed his expertise as a lead author... (read more)

2020-12-17 09:20:31

Esri Launches New Living Atlas Innovations to Revolutionise Digital Twin Technology

An interesting range of new uses for GIS around the world were celebrated at the 38th annual Esri User Conference in San Diego, California, held from 9-13 July. The Esri UC is a key global event for users of the company's technology who are changing their organisations as well as the world around them. One particular set of innovations showcased were updates to ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, the foremost collection of geographic information from around the globe. These updates included new data and capabilities for users to gain unprecedented insights to help in decision-making as well as a more... (read more)

2018-08-06 09:11:55

Twin Galileo Satellites Ready For Launch

The twin Galileo satellites are fully fuelled and mated together atop the upper stage that will haul them most of the way up into their final orbit. The launch is now planned for the evening of 12 October 2012 from the European Space Agency’s French Guyana launch site. Technicians donned protective suits to fill the two satellites’ tanks with hydrazine fuel, used to maintain the satellites’ attitude and orbital position during their planned 12-year lifetime. Rather than carry a significant amount of extra fuel to insert themselves into their planned orbits – like typical telecommunications satellites or Galileo’s US GPS equivalents... (read more)

2012-10-02 09:11:35

Digital Norway

Co-operating to Up Geo-information Use

Digital Norway is a collaboration that is playing an important role in implementation of the national spatial data infrastructure in Norway. At the root of the infrastructure is a national geoPortal enabling access to geoinformation data and services owned by producers at national, regional and local level. A sophisticated internet application has been developed to facilitate regional access for a broad range of new GIS users. Technological development is today moving rapidly from desktop GIS towards distributed GIS, leading to increased use and new users and allowing realisation of the full potential for geo-information. Recognising these areas of potential growth... (read more)

2007-01-01 12:00:00

Digital Technology as Leitmotif

In his latest column, Wim van Wegen reflects on digital technology as the leitmotif in Germany's role as a powerhouse within the geospatial industry. Traditionally, Germany is the heart of the geospatial industry at this time of the year, with Intergeo taking place in either September or October. The annual trade fair and conference is a major gathering of mapping and surveying professionals from all around the world. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, everything is different this year, and Intergeo was being held digitally from 13-15 October. For me, it felt almost surreal to not be travelling to Germany for... (read more)

2020-10-29 10:19:46