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SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2021 » VOLUME 11 » ISSUE 09 | ISSN 2277–3134
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SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2021 VOLUME: 11, ISSUE: 09
CONTENTS
Editor-in-Chief Sanjay Kumar Managing Editor Prof. Arup Dasgupta Executive Editor Vivek Mukherji
COVER STORY / 18
Contributing Editor Geospatial Infrastructure John Kedar
A SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP SUPPORTING SUSTAINABILITY TECH TRENDS
08 / The Real and Virtual Worlds EXPERT OPINION
26 / B uilding a System-of-systems Bart Brink, Global Program Director, Digital Twin, Royal HaskoningDHV
Contributing Editor Global Defense and Security Keith J. Masback Consulting Editor Spatial Analytics and Location Intelligence Nicholas Duggan INTERVIEW
14 / A nthony Tuffour
Director, Global Lead GIS and Digital Twins, BuroHappold Engineering
28 / G .V. Sreeramam
CEO, NeoGeoinfo Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
POLICY MATTERS
33 / V irtual Models for
Real Development
30 / A lison Rose
Chief of Place, Space and Communities Division, Geoscience Australia
30 / M elissa Harris
Chief Executive, Land Use Victoria
SPECIAL FEATURE
40 / T ech to Power Circular Economy CASE STUDY
46 / T aking Airborne LiDAR Surveying to Next Level
REGULAR FEATURES
04 / Editorial 06 / Product Watch
Consulting Editor Nishi Malhotra
38 / D r. Rudiger Ahrend
Head, Economic Analysis, Data & Statistics, OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Region and Cities
48 / J orge Valero
Director, Data and Digital Transformation, AEDAS Homes, Spain
Associate Editor Policy & Public Affairs Avneep Dhingra Sr. Assistant Editor Defense & Intelligence Meenal Dhande Assistant Editor Bhavna Sharma Chief Sub Editor Nibedita Mohanta Sr. Sub Editor Snehil Manohar Singh Chief Designer Subhash Kumar Visualizer Pradeep Chauhan Disclaimer
Geospatial World does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in the publication. All views expressed in this issue are those of the contributors. Geospatial World is not responsible for any loss to anyone due to the information provided. Owner, Publisher & Printer: Sanjay Kumar Printed at Virtika Offset Printers, G-14 Sector 3, Noida - 201 301, G.B. Nagar (UP) India Publication Address A - 92, Sector - 52, Noida - 201 301 India. Geospatial World: The edition contains 52 pages including cover. Geospatial Media and Communications Pvt. Ltd. A - 145, Sector - 63, Noida, India Tel + 91-120-4612500, Fax +91-120-4612555/666 Price: INR 150/US$15
September-October 2021 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | 3
EDITORIAL
Geospatial is Integral to Digital Information Infrastructure
T
he word ‘infrastructure’ infrastructure separately because conjures up images of the two have a symbiotic relationbig buildings, bridges, ship. While CAD, BIM and geospahighways, bus stations, tial technologies come together to airports, and railway stations. create digital models of physical All these are interrelated. For infrastructure, they also depend example, a multi-storey mall on the Cloud and communicaaccessed by a simple single lane tions technologies for data access road can lead to huge traffic snarls and delivery. and can be termed as a failure of infrastructure. But what kind of Physical models have been failure? Did the mall designers used extensively by architects consider the access infrastructure? but digital models, called digital Did they estimate the possible twins, are far more versatile as footfall and the resultant traffic? If they enable planning, monitoring the mall housed high-end stores, and modifications as the work then did they consider the kind of progresses. Spatial conflicts and transport vehicles that would need interference with the as-built Prof. Arup Dasgupta a parking space? Or did the municconstruction and the surroundarup@geospatialworld.net ipal authorities check the location ings can be detected at an early and its access and failed to widen stage and work arounds initithe road to a two-lane access, or maybe even deny ated before committing labor and materials to permission to the mall developers? the actual construction. This consumes limited resources and leads to a greater economy of effort. Each of these failures have a common thread running through them — lack of information. As the world moves from a regime of profligacy Indeed, a well-planned city infrastructure is to a regime of sustainability, there is a need to based on comprehensive and timely information optimize resource utilization and move beyond to collection, storage, availability, accessibility, resources reuse. A very common example is the reuse of wastewater for non-potable use. Space and flow. This is what is otherwise termed as exploration is supported by many advanced techan ‘information infrastructure’. In the analogue nologies which recycle waste for reuse by astrodomain, these were paper maps, tables, and text. nauts. Sustainability has to move in this direction Digital technologies further enabled information infrastructure through computers, databases, and because the pressure of a growing population is impacting two limited resources — land and water. text processing. The digital information infrastructure encompasses every technology from the The ultimate goal of geospatial infrastructure and digital twinning is to provide information to help Cloud to a cellphone and impacts every aspect of reach a situation where a perfect circular economy human activity. will produce minimum waste by repairing, recycling and reusing resources. This will need Position and time are two important elements maximum synergy between many technologies. in such an information infrastructure. These are Geospatial infrastructure needs to be aligned to provided by geospatial and PNT technologies, be able to support these efforts initially on earth which are themselves digital. Thus, they form an but later, as humankind begins to commercially important part of the digital information infrastructure. However, it would be wrong to consider exploit other celestial bodies, the Moon and Mars and beyond. geospatial infrastructure and digital information 4 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2021
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PRODUCT WATCH
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Radiometric Thermal Zoom Drone Payload Unveiled Teledyne FLIR has unveiled its FLIR Vue TZ20-R high resolution, thermal-zoom payload, which is purpose-built for drone pilots flying the DJI V2 Matrice 200 Series and Matrice 300 airframes. It includes radiometry to measure the temperature of every pixel in the scene. Featuring two 640x512 resolution FLIR Boson thermal camera modules, with one providing a narrow-field-of-view (18 degrees) and the other a wide-field-ofview (95 degrees), the Vue TZ20-R provides even greater situational awareness, accuracy, and context by offering more pixels on target
Benefits to Users
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with the corresponding temperature data. It offers simplified operation and payload connection via the Skyport V2.0 gimbal
on the DJI Matrice 300 or V2 Matrice 200 series. The Vue TZ20-R enables expanded search-area S&R missions, law enforcement surveillance in silence, and detailed industrial inspections from a safe stand-off distance.
Next-generation GNSS Receiver Trimble’s most recent launch, the DA2 GNSS receiver for its Catalyst positioning service, is a second-generation receiver and antenna that now includes the Trimble ProPoint GNSS engine for enhanced performance. The Bluetooth-enabled DA2 adds iOS support to the Catalyst service, greatly increasing the range of devices, workflows and apps that can be used with the Catalyst solution. Its ProPoint technology reduces convergence times and improves positioning accuracy when operating near trees and buildings. Trimble Catalyst is a subscription-based GNSS positioning service for location-enabled field applications. The service is available in accuracy-based packages from centimeter to sub-meter level for a wide range of mapping and mobile Geographic Information System (GIS) data collection projects. A broad range of GIS field applications is continued to be supported by Catalyst, including the Trimble TerraFlex software for form-based GIS data collection.
6 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2021
Key Features
• Enhanced performance over previous generation • iOS support now available • Improved positioning accuracy • Support for Trimble TerraFlex
Compact Drone Sets Up New Communication Standards
Laser Scanning Sensors Come With Autonomous Features
Parrot has launched ANAFI Ai, which is the first and only off-the-shelf drone to connect to Verizon’s 4G LTE network. ANAFI Ai is a compact professional drone, built for work, setting a new communications standard, open to developers, with a full open source app, autonomous one click photogrammetry and new levels of cybersecurity. In addition to its Verizon 4G LTE connectivity, it features a uniquely designed omni-directional obstacle avoidance system, 48 MP imaging accuracy, 4K 60fps smooth video, and up to 32 minutes of flight time in an airframe that weighs less than two pounds. Parrot ANAFI Ai’s embedded Secure Element secures the 4G LTE link between the drone and the user’s device. Users can activate 4G LTE connectivity in just a few taps exclusively in the Skyward InFlight mobile app. The ANAFI Ai 4G module supports more than 28 frequency bands, covering Captures Every Detail more than 98% • Compact of the frequen• Resistant in extreme situations cies deployed • Assisted flying around the world.
Leica BLK ARC and the Leica BLK2FLY, by Hexagon AB, extends the iconic and award-winning BLK series known for speed, portability, and mobility with fully autonomous mobile reality capture. The Leica BLK ARC is a laser scanning sensor purposely built to improve the autonomous navigation of robots and other carrier platforms to deliver fully autonomous mobile laser scanning. Combining its speed, accuracy, and versatility with robotics, the BLK ARC addresses the growing demand for autonomous solutions that can safely and repeatedly capture accurate 3D point clouds and panoramic images of changing environments with minimal user intervention. The Leica BLK2FLY is the world’s first fully integrated, autonomous flying laser scanning sensor. With a few simple taps on a tablet, users can quickly and easily scan structures and environments accurately and entirely from the air. The BLK ARC and BLK2FLY connect directly to Hexagon’s cloud-based visualisation platform, HxDR, where immediate data upload from the field, AI-enabled cloud processing and storage of the captured data enables instant delivery of a purposebuilt smart digital reality to anyone who needs it.
Fully Integrated
• Improve autonomous navigation of robots • Safely capture 3D point clouds, panoramic images
Innovative LiDAR System for Small Drones RedTail LiDAR Systems has launched RTL-450. This has been designed specifically for UAV LiDAR applications. Its LiDAR sensor incorporates a lightweight MEMS mirror and a precision navigation system to generate accurate data for the most demanding of aerial surveying missions. The high-resolution, three-dimensional point clouds created by the RTL-450 provide operators an unsurpassed ability to conduct advanced analytics of geographic and manmade features on the
earth’s surface. The RTL-450 is designed and assembled in the US and incorporates patented LiDAR sensor technology to achieve superior performance. The RTL-450 has been integrated onto the FLIR SkyRaider, Freefly Alta-8, 4D-X6, DJI Matrice 300 and DJI Matrice 600. The simple and easy to use software interface is coupled with a comprehensive online training curriculum. The system operates in a raster scan mode for surveillance missions and a side-to-side line scan mode for area mapping.
Easy to Use
• High point density • Accuracy and precision • High-resolution point clouds
September-October 2021 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | 7
TECH TRENDS
THE REAL AND VIRTUAL WORLDS We are at the start of a data revolution that has enabled us to envisage smart cities and digital twins. This is just the beginning of an industrial revolution that will change the world around us. By Nicholas Duggan
I
n 1999, before the turn of the new millennium, cinemagoers were captivated as Neo, a human who had been woken to the “real world”, took off his glasses and viewed the world as a digital representation made of glyphs. The Matrix was centered around the concept of a world similar to ours — a computer simulation that couldn’t
be distinguished from actual reality. At the time, it was mindbending and hard to conceive that such a simulation could be built. Almost a quarter of a century later, we openly discuss digital twins of complete cities.
The evolution Digital twins didn’t just appear; they evolved. For hundreds of
8 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2021
years, companies have built simulations and small-scale versions of full systems to test if certain aspects work, understand permissible parameters, or as urban designers and architects do, build small replicas of areas to see how a building might affect the surrounding aesthetic or light. Without years of small-scale testing and modeled simulations,
we may have never landed a rocket on the moon. This testing and analysis hasn’t changed; it still occurs in almost every business. Today, it is more in-depth and is on a hard drive or a data center in the digital form and is accessible to every involved party. With an exponential increase in our ability to process, analyze, store, and model digital data, we are able to accurately replicate the world around us — from wind, water, and fire in the natural environment, to aerodynamics, electronics and even structural integrity in the engineering world. Our ability to create virtual worlds and simulations has become more real. “The ultimate vision for the Digital Twin is to create, test and build our equipment in a virtual environment,” says John Vickers, NASA’s leading manufacturing expert and Manager of the agency’s Center for Advanced Manufacturing. “Only when we get it to where it performs to our requirements do we physically manufacture it. We then want that physical build to tie back to its Digital Twin through sensors, so that the Digital Twin contains all the information that we could have by inspecting the physical build,” adds Vickers. The first accepted mention of a Digital Twin was in 2002 at the University of Michigan by Michael Grieve. The proposed model had three components: real space, virtual space, and a linking mechanism for the flow of data/information between
With an exponential increase in our ability to process, analyze, store, and model digital data, we are able to accurately replicate the world around us the two. The model was then referred to as “Mirrored Spaces Model”. Although there was a large amount of interest, the technologies available at the time afforded no practical application — computing power was limited; there was little or no capable Internet; and there were limited number of ways to implement complex algorithms. When we look at geospatial technology at the start of the millennium, there were only a couple of software capable of rendering 3D models, one of which was a breakthrough software from a company called Google, which offered an interactive 3D world globe. Internet speeds at that time were at best around 64 kbps to 500 kbps (if you were lucky). Most computers available for business were still running (at best) 500 Mhz Pentium III processors with 16-bit graphics.
The turning point The turn of the century was a very exciting and confusing time. Businesses across the world were starting to see the benefits of investing in digitalization, and computers were no longer solely used for word processing, spreadsheets and pulling together reports, as they were in the late 1980s and 1990s. Businesses also saw the introduction of viable products from Autodesk and
Esri, which meant that working digitally saved them time, space, and empowered the users with more advanced analyses. A viewshed went from being a week of cartographic excellence to an analysis that could be run and printed in a day. By 2005, several national mapping agencies were either in the process of, or looking to, digitize their products. Relational databases were getting larger and more capable, and companies like Oracle were working with Esri to provide enterprise GIS systems capable of analyzing bigger data. This was the time when businesses started to see the value in geospatial data as more information was digitized. In 2006, one of the catalysts for the geospatial revolution was not from the geospatial industry; it was the Guardian newspaper, which began a campaign called “Free our Data”. This campaign started calling for the raw data gathered by Ordnance Survey and the data gathered on its behalf by local authorities at public expense to be made freely available for reuse by individuals and companies, in the same way that data in the USA was collected. The next five years changed everything. The geospatial industry started to get 3D capability, the open-source GIS
September-October 2021 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | 9
TECH TRENDS
movement started (including OpenStreetMap), and computers started to benefit from much more advanced Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) from Nvidia. A revolution had begun. The geospatial industry was now capturing data like never before, and thanks to the open-source movement, starting to share it. The number of connected devices surpassed the number of people on the planet, and connectivity was becoming available to start making use of those devices. In the UK, thanks to the success of the “Free our Data” campaign, the authorities began
creating Power of Information Taskforce Report, which would inform the government in 2009 of the benefits of opening data. That year, Gordon Brown, then Prime Minister, announced publicly that all Ordnance Survey mid-scale data would be available for free. In 2010, the national mapping agency released its first national open data, allowing a set of full UK vector datasets. Around the same time, the UK government opened the data.gov.uk website, with the claim that it would “offer reams of public sector data, ranging from traffic statistics to crime figures, for private or commercial use”.
In the last decade, there has also been a huge advancement in 3D GIS and gaming engines to enable the use of 3D models vital to the rendering of the internal and external components for digital twins 10 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2021
This happened mere months after the US had set up its own site data. gov to provide a single site for open government data. “I want Britain to be the world leader in the digital economy, which will create over a quarter of a million skilled jobs by 2020; the world leader in public service delivery where we can give the greatest possible voice and choice to citizens, parents, patients, and consumers; and the world leader in the new politics where that voice for feedback and deliberative decisions can transform the way we make local and national policies and decisions. Underpinning the digital transformation that we are likely to see over the coming decade is the creation of the next generation of the web — what is called the semantic web, or the web of linked data,” said Gordon Brown on March 22, 2010.
same time, Building Information Modeling (BIM) standards were being developed as computational and Cloud technologies were making everything possible. Furthermore, advancements in Business Intelligence meant dashboards and real-time information were starting to form the notion of smart cities. Advanced cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi were already collecting 3D information (as well as internal building shapes) as part of their planning systems, so that it could be used when the technology was available. In the last decade, there has also been a huge advancement in 3D GIS and gaming engines to enable the use of 3D models vital to the rendering of the internal and external components for
these digital twins. Today, you just need to have a Google 3D city model and there are many different data available, whereas ten years ago, there were only a couple, and they were mostly digitized using photogrammetry. Now, there is a huge industry in 3D modeling, with many cities digitized in high detail 3D, available to download in gaming engine or GIS format for free. The city of Zurich is a great example of that. Due to the availability of sensors, data capture devices (of the imagery, survey, and seismic kind), connectivity like 5G, open data defining boundaries, topography, terrain and weather, as well as advanced Earth Observation information, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine
Photo Credit: Wikimedia
The boom Almost overnight, the geospatial industry went from struggling backroom cartographers and data scientists to holding the world in the digital form on their hard drives. Data was available everywhere and it didn’t take long to start putting the dots together and releasing the power of GIS by linking information together to generate more insights and results, with “mash-up” groups, geodata hackathons, and OpenStreetMap meetups occurring on a monthly basis. It was a perfect storm of breakthroughs that were occurring simultaneously — the Internet of Things (IoT) was exploding, the price of devices was decreasing, precision location devices were becoming more affordable, and the technology was improving rapidly. At the
September-October 2021 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | 11
TECH TRENDS
As computers become more powerful and microchips become smaller, we will see more complex IoT sensors and the ability to consume more information Learning (ML), it is easier to build a Digital Twin. This has certainly been the approach taken by the renewables, farming, insurance, oil and gas industries, as well as governments. By using digital twins, the industry has the ability to consume data from the multitude of information from sensors, analyze trends, provide predictions using AI and ML, and then visualize this through dashboards, 3D, 4D, and even Virtual Reality, to ensure that the risks and potential damages are reduced to a minimum, if not zero. This not only
provides a safe product or urban environment but also provides a very profitable and financially secure business proposition.
The future So, where do we go from here? Well, it is hard to speculate but what is certain is that as computers become more powerful and microchips become smaller, we will see more complex IoT sensors and the ability to consume more information. We will also be able to make sense of it through better technology, whether it be more engaging VR, AR, or interactive
holographic TVs. Computer-aided Design (CAD), GIS, and gaming engines are already becoming more integrated, and it isn’t hard to see that in the near future there will be a single system that will consume all this data and apply it in a common standard. This will mean a reduction of silos between data scientists, BIM practitioners, GIS, CAD, 3D modelers, architects, environmental specialists, historic specialists, acoustic specialists, meteorological specialists, and even engineers. According to Statista, the number of IoT devices will reach 25.44 billion by 2030. This is almost triple of what is available today, according to data growth statistics. In the consumer segment, the primary use cases for the technology will be media devices like smartphones, smart grid, asset tracking and monitoring, autonomous vehicles, and IT infrastructure. Furthermore, the Handbook of Research on Cloud Infrastructures for Big Data Analytics claims that machine-generated data accounted for over 40% of Internet data in 2020, and the global machine language value will amount to $117.19 billion by the end of 2027.
Photo Credit: Esri
We are at the start of a data revolution that has enabled us to envisage smart cities and Digital twins. This is just the beginning of an industrial revolution that will change the world around us. Nicholas Duggan Consulting Editor Spatial Analytics and Location Intelligence Circular Quay project by Norman, Disney, and Young uses BIM and GIS for renovation conditions communication 12 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2021
nicholas@geospatialworld.net
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INTERVIEW
SPATIAL DATA IS INTEGRAL TO DIGITAL TWIN ECOSYSTEM Spatial data represents the Earth and its features using geometric and topological constructs for object representation. Hence, it creates digital twins of the built environment and helps integrate diverse datasets to derive insights and patterns from multiple sources, says Anthony Tuffour, Director, Global Lead GIS and Digital Twins, BuroHappold Engineering. By Avneep Dhingra How has the data explosion in the last decade impacted the way governments, businesses, and societies operate, and what kind of opportunities and challenges will this present in the future? With increasingly connected devices, cheaper hardware technologies, citizen science, and social media, more and more datasets are becoming available by the minute. This has led to the creation of a data-rich ecosystem, with both opportunities and challenges on offer. Governments, businesses and societies have significantly benefited from the data explosion through the elevation of data as a critical asset and using analytics and insights to plan and allocate limited resources to achieve operational effectiveness. Some governments have adopted open data strategies to ensure transparency in dealing with their citizens,
public service improvements, and innovation. To businesses, data is a new critical asset that has received investment to understand internal bottlenecks. It helps them plan, model, and simulate future events before they even occur. However, the benefits cannot go without challenges. One of the areas worth noting is cognitive conflict — citizens using the same data to challenge government and business decisions with a different interpretation of the data. This can result in lengthy litigations, causing delays in preliminary project design and delivery. Then there is the issue of data literacy. Organizations and governments have a considerable amount of data to use but are not data literate to exploit and derive meaningful insights to their advantage. Governments, businesses, and societies are to blame for exposing vulnerable groups to attacks and
14 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2021
marginalization due to the poor handling of detailed data they have on them. Companies that have considerable wealth can use data to derive insights to control markets and stifle competition. This is the reason why some people are skeptical of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Radical critiques of the established order view governments and corporations joining forces to employ digital technology to consolidate and extend their power and influence all aspects of society. Data ethics and innovation should be at the heart of all data initiatives to ensure safe and ethical use of AI and ML, including protection to control abuse.
The advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has accelerated digitalization and boosted both data collection and processing. Can you
throw light on the new businesses and business models that have emerged due to this phenomenon? Data is playing a critical role in repurposing and rejuvenating the life of existing assets, which, by their nature, would have been underutilized. It has helped drive efficiency and productivity gains by making clear patterns and behaviors of people and assets. Data, computation, automation, and analytics are at the core of 4IR. These have helped boost the circular economy model. It has benefited from the cravings of modern society to consume more information, stay connected, be independent, and be heavily assisted by computation and automation. As a result, eBay, Google, Facebook, Uber, Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., have sprung up, and their market capitalization outstrips traditional businesses. Their business models are based on democratizing access to information and communication, connectedness, and real-time insights. Digital Twin is cited as the most disruptive technology tool of our time. What makes these digital replicas so special and how can we leverage them for social and economic development? Digital Twin is a beneficial disruptive technology of our time, and it is an integral and immersive part of our behavior. A Digital Twin integrates vast amounts of static and real-time data to model and predict future events before they even occur. With this capability, it becomes possible
The advent of Engineering 4.0 has impacted the ability to model human behavior and the way people interact with spaces
to utilize limited resources to achieve desired results. A Digital Twin helps in reducing maintenance costs of assets, improving resource management, making infrastructure more resilient, enhancing project collaboration, and creating an innovative digital environment to solicit community feedback on local issues. One of the core characteristics of a Digital Twin is its ability to model and understand organizational processes. It helps to remove waste, prevents duplication, and leads to increasing productivity and profits. Today, these digital models are also becoming valuable in achieving net-zero carbon target realization. A smart energy Digital Twin enables intelligent selection and validation of domestic heat network solutions by incorporating real-world data.
benefited hugely from digital twins, especially in aviation. It needs intense data analytics and insights about machine processes and performance due to the safety and reliability requirements for operations. This is also applicable to transportation infrastructure design, modeling, and simulation to understand the impact of transportation network development on the environment, traffic scenario modeling, and simulation of driving scenarios to improve safety on roads, construction costs, passenger analysis, asset lifecycle modeling, travel flows, etc. Recently, automated driving has become a topical issue and has seen significant investments. Digital twins help model environmental scenes and hazard detection to reduce crashes and save lives.
Can you name a few sectors that are the biggest users of Digital Twin technology and the ways in which they are benefitting from it? Transportation: Historically, the transportation sector has
Energy and utilities: A smart energy Digital Twin helps in understanding current and future energy requirements through modeling and simulation with real-life data from sensors. Examples of insights derived through digital twins are hourly, monthly,
September-October 2021 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | 15
INTERVIEW
and annual heat demands using different climatic conditions, building typologies and material composition, and household dynamics. The demand invariably relates to hourly, peak, monthly, and yearly electricity consumption. The suitable energy technology investment can have a corresponding impact on net-zero realization. Additionally, digital twins in the utility sector perform system feasibility and grid integration analysis, collate and analyze large datasets in real time to design and optimize distribution networks.
environment and helps integrate diverse datasets to derive insights and patterns from multiple sources. Spatial data and digital twins share similar elements and characteristics: data capture, integration and interoperability, data standards, methods and procedures, automation, computation and analytics, modeling, simulation and prediction, data visualization, communication and sharing, and the technology platform for deployment. These make them intertwined, making spatial data an integral part of the Digital Twin ecosystem.
Construction: Digital twins provide the tools, data integration (aerial and drone surveys, building models, terrain, sensor data), and the platform to manage a construction site in a virtual environment. This helps visualize all construction activities taking place — who is doing what, where, and when. This also enables stakeholder engagement and collaboration. Further, dashboard insights assist project managers in identifying and resolving risks in real time to minimize delays and optimize costs. Because it is virtual, it facilitates remote access via live video streaming that helps monitoring and coordination from anywhere.
How has Engineering 4.0 impacted the ability to model human behavior and the way people interact with spaces? Engineering 4.0 has seen the advent and widespread application of AI and ML, mass adoption of robotics to replace specific human tasks with precision, connected devices, IoT, digital twins, and Big Data analytics and insights to improve and design spaces. These technologies attempt to mimic almost all the human senses to enhance and create new spaces, making it difficult to distinguish humans from machines. We are in a state of flux, and adoption is happening at great speed. Reality and virtuality are becoming indistinguishable. There is great scope to perfect human behavior in digital twins to create sustainable spaces. We are inching ever closer to human behavior modeling with Edge Computing, Blockchain, Holographic Projections, ML, AI, Virtual Reality, Metaverse
How do you view the role of spatial data in building, operating a Digital Twin? Spatial data represents the Earth (spaces, places, and locations) and its features using geometric and topological constructs for object representation. Hence, it creates digital twins of the built
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and hovering in the horizon is quantum and neuromorphic computing. Currently, facial recognition, image analysis, computer vision, and health informatics are providing advances to help understand and appreciate human behavior. In the UK, the Channel 4 TV series Humans is a must watch, as it explores the themes of AI and robotics, “focusing on the social, cultural, and psychological impact of the invention of anthropomorphic robots called synth”. There is growing adoption and integration of psychological research into computer applications, making it difficult to distinguish choices and decisions made by humans from machines. Humans are not machines because they create machines. Humans make life choices and mistakes; however, machines are programed to follow specific rules without making as many mistakes as possible in developing and using spaces. Even though we strive to model human behavior in devices, we need empathy to achieve greatness. The key challenges to human behavior modeling are emotional intelligence, culture, religion, sex, environment, and life experiences to demonstrate passion, thoughts, and efforts to execute and interact in human spaces. Interestingly, neuromorphic computing led by Intel is the next big thing to the full realization of human behavior modelling. It is concerned with mimicking the neural structure and inner workings of human brain and acts to deal with uncertainty, vagueness, ambiguity and contradictions in the natural world.
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COVER STORY
A Symbiotic Relationship Supporting Sustainability While geospatial infrastructure is required to model and simulate changes in the real world and feed them into the Digital Twin ecosystem, a digital replica at the national level can open doors to a whole range of geospatial applications in multiple sectors. Together, these two can support sustainable economic practices. By Dr. Shivangi Somvanshi & Ruban Jacob
T
he Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is leading to an explosion in the volume of geospatially referenced data linked to different value-chains. This will help in providing a new and greater understanding of how processes work and how our society behaves. However, data is not the endpoint. The true value of data lies in its use to derive knowledge to meet current and future needs. Most of the world’s greatest challenges are time and place-related,
which makes geospatial and location data extremely important. Thus, geospatial knowledge is crucial for solving these challenges and needs to be placed at the heart of tomorrow’s sustainable digital society. “Geospatial knowledge relies on rapidly evolving ecosystems of data that combine different sources,” Alison Rose, Chief of Place, Space, and Communities Division, Geoscience Australia, told Geospatial World. The Big Data analytics, Artificial Intelligence
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(AI), and modeling communities are vital to the creation of spatial knowledge, and are no longer just customers — they have the same standing as data providers in the geospatial space. The evolving digital ecosystem has created the need for a next-generation geospatial infrastructure that embraces automation, dynamicity, and realtime delivery of knowledge.
Why geospatial infrastructure? Geospatial infrastructure is a “system-of-systems” that
Decide Action
Industry
Shared Understanding
Knowledge
Predict Know Why Know How
Collection of information with its associated context, giving understanding
nit i
on
➝ Knowledge and Insight services
Co g
➝ Software services
Information
➝ Analytics services
What Where When
sin g
Collection of data arranged and ordered in a consistent way
Pr oc
es
➝ Data services
Value
Ju
dg
me nt
Wisdom
Data Facts, signals, or symbols
This knowledge management cognitive pyramid demonstrates the relationship between data and knowledge. 4IR technologies enable knowledge to be generated automatically, thereby improving decision-making Source: Adapted from DIKW Model for Knowledge Management and Data Value Extraction
interconnects people, processes, data, and technology. It has emerged as a vision to frame these increasingly integrated components of the geospatial industry. These components have advanced dramatically since maps and images of the Earth were first digitized and visualized on computers. Just as one cannot create geospatial data without hardware or visualize and analyze it without software, one cannot develop solutions that deliver a greater geographic awareness without each of these components of geospatial infrastructure. Today, the Internet and cloud computing are transforming the way organizations
manage, analyze, and share data and collaborate through an interconnected network of systems and portals. Cloud and edge computing, AI and Machine Learning (ML), paired with Internet of Things (IoT) devices are changing how data is collected, processed, and managed. Further, open platforms are enabling multiple levels of interoperability, and secure and highly scalable web services are fueling the dynamic maps, apps, and information products that help scientists, decision-makers, and the general public understand the world around them. Geospatial infrastructure can connect multiple organizations across borders, sectors, and jurisdictions, thereby
reshaping the way we collaborate for better outcomes.
Geospatial infrastructure and digital twins Since the essence of the Fourth Industrial Age lies in embracing automation, data interoperability, data exchange, and manufacturing technologies, the Digital Twin technology lies at its core. A Digital Twin is a virtual replica of a physical asset, process or service. It acts as a means to link digital models and simulations with real-world data to create new possibilities for better creativity, competitive advantage and human-centered design. The Digital Twin concept cuts across various sectors, changing the traditional
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National Geological Agency
Municipalities and Government Bodies
Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning
• Asset Tags • Work Orders • Maintenance Records • Inspection Records • Demographic Data
Information
National Earth Observation Agency
Geospatial Data Infrastructure
4D Solutions
Visualization through
• IoT Feeds • Sensors • Drones • LiDAR • Point Clouds • Spatial Imageries and Data
Geospatial
Digital Twin
Source: Netherlands Geolocation Economy Report: Geospatial World Analysis
Parcel Framework | Administrative Areas | Street Data | Vegetation Database | Location Data for Emergency Services
Energy Networks | Green Space | Building Attributes | Health Data | Public Mobility Data | Land Administration Data | Hydrography Data
Topography | Terrain | Address Base | Road and Highways Network | Underground Location Data | Water Network | Utility Network
National Mapping Agency
Immersive Visualization (AR/VR)
• Specifications • Drawings • Documents • Models • Analysis • GeoTech • OEM Specs
Engineering
Data Flow
Integration of Engineering, Operations and Non-Spatial Information
Data Flow
PHYSICAL ASSET
Create ➝ Communicate ➝ Aggregate ➝ Analyze ➝ Insight ➝ Act
Role of Geospatial Data Infrastructure in Digital Twin
COVER STORY
approaches that required designing to be exclusively done in the industrial world, and bringing in a more virtual system-based design process. The implementation of these digital replicas helps organizations derive better insights, improve product performance, and enhance operational and strategic decisions. However, creating and maintaining an efficient Digital Twin requires overcoming challenges concerning data exchange, governance, and interoperability. “While it is difficult to build a Digital Twin, the biggest challenge is to maintain it. The key questions concerning a Digital Twin are: how will you make it, how will you keep it up to date, how will you maintain it, and whether you have a good maintenance process that is not just limited to administrative maintenance but covers reallife maintenance,” says Ingrid Vanden Berghen, Director, National Geographic Institute, Belgium. To overcome these challenges, geospatial infrastructure serves as the foundation of Digital Twin, leading to greater demand for authoritative, accurate, updated and accessible data platforms. Geospatial infrastructure is primarily the responsibility of national geospatial organizations (national mapping agencies, survey organizations, geological agencies, Earth Observation agencies, etc.), which have a critical role to play in reinforcing the Digital Twin technology in
Without authenticated data from geospatial infrastructure, building a Digital Twin of a city for public safety and citizen services, for health and governance, or for transport infrastructure networks, is an incomplete process varied economic sectors. Geospatial data, when facilitated in real time by national geospatial organizations, results in a continuously updated Digital Twin — a system-of-systems that is accessible anytime from anywhere by all stakeholders. For instance, to build the Digital Twin of a city, a large-scale base map, topography and terrain data, a map of underground networks of cables and pipes, a map of transport networks and buildings, precise positioning data from GNSS systems and IoT sensors, spatial data maintained by municipalities and city departments, along with non-spatial content such as zoning regulations and laws, emergency services contact information, and more, needs to be available and usable. Additionally, a twin is often built by using latest modeling technologies and applications, such as a standard-based semantic city information model and a reality mesh model. So, to build a viable digital replica, geospatial infrastructure provides reliable, continuously updated and maintained centralized datasets, as per the requirements of the models. It also enables easy data interoperability and helps in maintaining data standards. To build digital twins of different sectors, cities, or even
countries, a strong geospatial infrastructure is of great importance. Hence, investments have to be made in building and strengthening this infrastructure, including in the organizations that are responsible for managing, processing, and automating the core geospatial data for the surface infrastructure assets, both above and below. Without authenticated data from geospatial infrastructure, building a Digital Twin of a city for public safety and citizen services, for health and governance, or for transport infrastructure networks, is an incomplete process. “The adoption and scaling of a Digital Twin at the national level requires strengthening of the national geospatial infrastructure and turning it into a Digital Twin infrastructure through a demand-driven approach, in which all stakeholders, including the government, academia, knowledge institutes, geospatial industry, non-governmental organizations, and citizens work together to co-create an ecosystem of digital twins at different levels,” says Michel Grothe, Senior Scientist, Geonovum.
How can digital twins benefit the geospatial industry? Digital twinning is used across various sectors, ranging from
September-October 2021 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | 21
COVER STORY
A Knowledge Infrastructure for Tomorrow
A Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure (GKI) makes use of 4IR technologies and the growing digital infrastructure and turns a data and supply-centric centralized system into an analytics and demand-centric Cloud-based system with instant data analysis and predictive modeling. This provides greater access to geospatial knowledge to both spatial and non-spatial users. A Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure can create a broad, collaborative, connected, and innovative geospatial sector in the future. “A knowledge infrastructure is only going to be realized through close collaboration between national mapping authorities and other organizations in the value chain. It is important to establish a common business model across public and private sectors. Building a digital platform and providing cloud-based services is quite expensive, so it is important to find a financial model that is sustainable.”
JOHNNY WELLE
Director-General, Norwegian Mapping Authority
Data, Analysts, Algorithms, Quality, Standards
Business, Consumer, Government (people & machine)
GKI
GNSS, Web, 5G, Cloud, Platforms, Sensors
GKI creates a system-of-systems in which geospatial is regarded as a part of the wider digital ecosystem Source: Geospatial World
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Within the geospatial industry, there is a lot of data generated in-house, which means there are lots of opportunities for technology professionals seeking to make their own imprints by enriching that data and integrating it with the national infrastructure for the development of digital twins
The relationship between a National Digital Twin and geospatial infrastructure is symbiotic in nature. While geospatial infrastructure is required to model and simulate changes in the real world and feed them into the Digital Twin ecosystem, a digital replica at the national level can open doors to a whole range of geospatial applications in various economic sectors. Within the geospatial industry, there is a lot of data generated in-house, which means there are lots of opportunities for technology professionals as well as entre-
preneurs seeking to make their own imprints by enriching that data and integrating it with the national infrastructure for the development of digital twins. This data delivery and integration can lead to many new partnership models, which can directly benefit geospatial players.
How can geospatial infrastructure and digital twins support sustainable economic practices? Geospatial technology, complemented by advances in digital technologies, plays a big role in enabling circular economy practices. A circular economy is an
Benefits of a National Digital Twin
Benefits to Society
• Transport stakeholder engagement • Better outcomes for the public • High-performing infrastructure and services
1 Benefits to Economy
• Increased national productivity • Efficient measurement of outcomes • Enhanced information security
2 Benefits to Businesses
3
• Creation of new markets, new services, new business models and new entrants • Improved efficiency and better risk management • Optimal delivery efficiency and reduction of uncertainty
Benefits to Environment
• Greater resource efficiency • Promotion of circular economy • Less disruption and waste
4 Benefit to Individuals
• Citizen science • Increasing sustainable mobility
5
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Source:Geospatial World Analysis
manufacturing, healthcare, automobile, retail, public safety, digital cities, architecture, disaster management, defense and intelligence, to engineering and construction. Using varied sensors and cognitive tools and technologies, Digital Twin solutions help improve product design and services. As these digital models are deployed in every industry, many countries around the world are now developing or implementing their own National Digital Twin programs — an ecosystem of connected twins — to democratize data access and enable collaboration between industries and disciplines. The UK and the Netherlands are excellent examples of how countries are using this transformative technology for better outcomes.
COVER STORY
In order to minimize environmental impacts in ways that will generate customer loyalty, businesses can use GIS and geo-targeting to map their customers in certain areas and initiate either a buyback campaign or a recycling drop-off campaign at a certain phase of the product ownership cycle economic model that is designed to tackle global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, etc. Unlike most linear economy businesses that take a natural resource and turn it into a product that ultimately becomes waste because of the way it was designed, a circular economy employs reuse, sharing, repair, refurbishment, and recycling to create a closed-loop system, minimizing the burden on natural resources. The digitization of the built environment due to enhanced computing power, cheaper sensors, IoT devices, advanced analytics, and greater 3D visualization, has the potential to actively contribute towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A circular economy requires products to be connected digitally to the manufacturer, so that the entire product lifecycle can be monitored. Although the circular economy revolves around SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production, all 17 goals are interconnected and can benefit by the circular transition. A Digital Twin, which is a digital representation of a physical asset designed to monitor, control, and optimize its
functionality, can enable effective monitoring of products under a circular economy. Through data and feedback, both simulated and real, a digital replica can develop capacities for autonomy and help to learn from and reason about its environment. Geospatial infrastructure, which consists of content/data, maps, apps, and GIS systems apart from the usual IT infrastructure (systems, storage, and networking), serves as the foundation for the Digital Twin. A circular economy requires products to be connected digitally to the manufacturer, so that the entire product lifecycle can be monitored. For example, a challenge for construction waste remanufacturing is the localization and corporate information communication of the industry chain. The use of digital twins can help in overcoming this issue by building connections among individuals in the industry chain. A twin, which is almost identical to the entity of the regional recycling industry, can be built, linking the physical and the digital remanufacturing industry of construction waste, and identifying dynamic changes in the industry through the analysis of the unified data. Also, these
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models can assist in tracking, recycling and management of waste materials. In order to use recycled materials repeatedly, it is important to have insights into the end-to-end supply chain. Geospatial infrastructure offers interactive visualization of big datasets from raw material to distribution. In order to minimize environmental impacts in ways that will generate customer loyalty, businesses can use GIS and geo-targeting to map their customers in certain areas and initiate either a buyback campaign or a recycling drop-off campaign at a certain phase of the product ownership cycle. The rebought/dropped-off products can be fed back into the production cycle as raw material for building new products. “Circularity necessitates coordination between different stakeholders to make sure that a product/by-product reaches someone who needs it. A Digital Twin can help with coordination by bringing people together, and making sure that they view and use the same data, share the same knowledge, and thereby come to an agreement,” explains Florian Arthur Witsenburg, CEO, Tygron. Dr. Shivangi Somvanshi Director, Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure shivangi@geospatialworld.net
Ruban Jacob Program Manager, Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure ruban@geospatialworld.net
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BUILDING A SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS
T
he simplicity of a virtual replica of a physical situation and the wide application of Digital Twin makes this concept so special. It is not limited to a particular sector or technology. In fact, a Digital Twin brings together several different technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), among others. Another reason for the rising popularity of digital twins is the growing complexity of our world and the urgent need to deal with this complexity. There are many challenges and concerns to be addressed — be it climate change or business resilience, or issues concerning our supply chains and cities. The technologies that Digital Twin brings together can really help overcome these challenges.
The right approach When building a Digital Twin, it is important to understand what is required of it. Therefore, before looking into the technology part, it is important to focus on the business or societal needs. A digital replica essentially solves two purposes. First, it provides an insight into what is currently happening in the physical world through dashboards, GIS maps and VR models. Second, and most important, it acts as a decision-support tool — helping make small operational decisions as well as large decisions concerning investments. Since it represents the physical environment, one can run simulations around that environment to answer ‘what if ’ questions. Then, there is the opportunity to add algorithms to make predictions based on historical data and figure out how certain assets 26 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2021
Since a Digital Twin is a representation of the physical world, location or spatial data is fundamental to its creation and management. By Bart Brink
In the Netherlands, work is in progress to build a Digital Twin at the national level
or processes will perform in the future. This can even result in situations where digital twins become the virtual operators of assets or business processes.
Fusion of silos We are currently witnessing a fusion of silos. Traditionally, there has been the geospatial space, the construction space, the infrastructure space, and there have been targeted developments in silos. However, now, when facing new complexities and challenges, it is necessary to look beyond the object level, asset level, or even city and regional levels. This is because all these systems are currently connected and the Digital Twin system enables
these connections. But we can’t limit ourselves to a single digital replica; the need of the hour is to have an ecosystem of digital twins. Perhaps that is why we see the concept of national level digital twins emerging in countries like the UK, the Netherlands, and several others. Particularly in the Netherlands, the authorities have invested a lot in making the basic layer of information available. Simultaneously, a lot of work has happened on the digitalization front. We are gradually getting rid of silos and are making processes smarter and more efficient. At the national level steps have been taken to establish a National Digital Twin that connects connecting all the dots.
When building a Digital Twin, it is important to understand what is required of it. Therefore, before looking into the technology part, it is important to focus on the business or societal needs
This program is of national and European interest.
Location is key Since a Digital Twin is basically a representation of the physical world, location or spatial data is fundamental to its creation and management. This is because the information provides us with the crucial answer to ‘where’. It’s about building a system-of-systems and location information holds the key to connecting those systems. While at the local or regional levels a Digital Twin may not require too much collaboration, when we move up one level in complexity, say at the national level, we need to have close collaboration between private and public sectors, and even research organizations. Because an efficient digital replica needs accurate data from various sources. Bart Brink is the Global Program Director, Digital Twin at Royal HaskoningDHV; and Chair of the Digital Twin Working Group within Buildings Smart International.
September-October 2021 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | 27
INTERVIEW
Geospatial Solutions to Support Business Goals
With extensive domain-specific knowledge, we know how to transform complex data relationships into meaningful and actionable information for the industry, says G.V. Sreeramam, CEO, NeoGeoinfo Technologies Pvt. Ltd., in an interview to Geospatial World. Can you tell us about your company, its key areas of focus, and future plans? NeoGeoInfo is a 15-year-old, 200+ people strong SEI CMM Level3 organization providing Geospatial Services and Solutions. We have special focus on 1) Urban Local Body (ULB) level governance solutions concerning property tax optimization using Geo-coding, Digital Door Numbers, Land Resurvey projects, Smart Cities and Surveillance and 2) Cross Country Infrastructure i.e. Telecom/ Optical Fiber, Gas Distribution, Power Transmission, Highways, and Water networks. We have the required proficiency and experience to provide the most appropriate solutions on data acquisition, processing and management. Can you provide some insight into the evolution of GIS solution providers in the geospatial industry? Geospatial is one of the fastest evolving industries (not just in terms of growth in size) with rapid changes in technology innovation and its application. Geospatial is no longer limited to providing a visual representation of the data, it is now driving business models and giving competitive advantage to users. As the industry evolved, the
solution providers had to upgrade their offerings to meet changing demand. Most of our solutions involve offering business insights, reducing costs, improving operational efficiencies and efficient project management. However, good quality data is an important start point, and so, good data (acquisition techniques) provides effective results. Hence, solution providers need to be involved in the end-to-end spectrum of activities, including data acquisition, modelling and management.
How have advancements in surveying technology opened new possibilities for data capture and processing, and new opportunities for geospatial companies? Survey and data acquisition techniques have evolved dramatically in two important directions. The first is the technology to acquire data from nano-Satellites, drones to edge devices. The second is the ability to consume the data in raw format — like point clouds for an autonomous vehicle. Automation is driving both these trends, and is making processes independent of people. This is a big shift happening making data acquisition and consumption a less human resource hungry industry.
28 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2021
The other dimension, and the most important one, is the policy-level change — lifting the restrictions on data acquisition, for example. In India, the government has completely changed the policy, handing over a huge advantage to the industry in data acquisition and its use. This will revolutionize not only the means of data collection, but also the ends (its usage).
Can you tell us about your company’s map, model, and manage strategy, and how it supports efficient solutions for customers? We have organized ourselves internally to meet customer needs in an efficient manner. Map is for data acquisition, Model is for discovering insights from the collected data, and Manage is for making those insights meaningful to people — by enabling data availability at the right time, right place, and to the right people. Our teams have gained extensive knowledge to leverage cognitive technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to better view and interpret multiple geospatial data sources. We are also proficient in bringing data to life by custom visualizations and Cloud-based applications. With specific domain knowledge, our colleagues know how to transform complex data relationships into meaningful and actionable information for the industry.
Creating Customer Value Over 15 Years India’s Fastest Growing Geospatial Solutions Provider
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INTERVIEW
STRIVING FOR SUSTAINABILITY WITH DIGITAL TWIN
Alison Rose (AR), Chief of Place, Space and Communities Division, Geoscience Australia, and Melissa Harris (MH), Chief Executive, Land Use Victoria, in an interview with Geospatial World, talk about how digital twins are gaining pace in Australia for governance, development and sustainability. Today, Digital Twin seems to have become the buzzword in multiple industries. What makes this technology so special and how is it making work processes transparent and more efficient? AR: The Digital Twin technology is transformative because it can show an immersive, interactive, virtual reality of the world around us — how it was in the past, how it is today, and what it could be like in the future. We see many examples globally, like in Europe, North America and Asia, of nations forging ahead with sophisticated and easy-to-use spatial digital twins of their major cities. These nations are deriving significant benefits from embracing this technology — particularly around confidence in decision-making, reduced
stakeholder risk and cost savings — by applying the ‘design once, build many’ concept. In Australia, COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of digital technology, including digital twins, which helps businesses and governments better understand and manage complex processes first virtually and then in the real world. Many jurisdictions in Australia have embarked on building their own digital twins, particularly in two of the most populated states, New South Wales and Victoria.
model changes and create impacts in the wider landscape beyond our buildings and cities. We are partnering across Commonwealth, State and Territory governments, including through the Australian and New Zealand Land Information Council, to develop a national approach to digital twins. This partnership is critical, given that we face challenges that do not stop at the state borders. There is a growing desire among decision-makers to have access to the same trusted, authoritative base.
Australia is a highly urbanized country, yet many of our nation’s challenges occur in and around our regions and in the interactions between cities and regions. The Digital Twin technology is important to Australia because we see the opportunity to apply it to
Can you give an example of how Australia is using the Digital Twin technology for good governance and development? MH: The Government of Victoria recently announced a record
(Right) Alison Rose (Left) Melissa Harris
investment in the Digital Twin technology and spatial innovation, committing AU$ 37.4 million ($26.9 million) to the Digital Twin Victoria Program. This innovative new program will harness cuttingedge Digital Twin technology, rich 3D and 4D spatial data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), sensor data, and more, to revolutionize how we plan, model and consult on the built and natural environments. For the first time in Victoria, high-quality datasets, intelligent analytics and future-ready infrastructure will come together in a single state-wide transformational program. It encompasses seven workstreams — advanced Earth Observation, enhanced disaster response, utilities, asset management, faster subdivision registrations, automated approvals and the Digital Twin Victoria platform. The combined power of these workstreams will help facilitate better, data-driven decisions about the impact of change on our communities and the environment. The Digital Twin Victoria Platform will house the most comprehensive collection of rich 3D spatial data ever assembled for Victoria and will provide a collaborative digital workspace for all government departments across planning, transport, infrastructure, and land management. The platform has been built using TerriaJS technology from CSIRO’s (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) data and digital arm, Data61. An example of the transformative projects that will be enabled by Digital Twin Victoria is the eComply pilot, which explores how
Digital twins allow us to view the future, where we can virtually model and predict how changes to our environment will interact with current and future surroundings. This allows us to assess the impact that different Digital Twin designs will have socially, economically and environmentally to make the historically complex task of housing approvals faster, easier and cheaper. The eComply tool uses Digital Twin, spatial intelligence and Machine Learning (ML) to assess digital building designs’ compliance with the Small Lot Housing Code. The eComply pilot is already demonstrating the value that the Digital Twin technology can deliver to unlock regulatory red tape by taking weeks off current building approval times and delivering over AU$ 30 million ($21.5 million) in benefits.
How can a digital replica at the national level help in ensuring sustainable development? AR: Digital twins allow us to view the future, where we can virtually model and predict how changes to our environment will interact with current and future surroundings. This allows us to assess the impact that different Digital Twin designs will have socially, economically and environmentally. I believe that the greatest sustainability insights will come when we connect multiple digital twins to give us an integrated virtual picture with all its complex social, economic and environmental interdependencies. Once this is achieved, we will be in a position to model and forecast the various ramifications of
different design decisions on the environment that are felt far from the source of the initial change, especially if we enable modeling at the local, regional and national scales. When we think that these models and forecasts can be re-run many times, and the inputs adjusted in countless ways, we can then identify and choose the most sustainable options. This will give us an unprecedented evidencebase that enhances confidence in the decisions we make.
How can project-based Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) help in building and maintaining efficient digital twins? MH: The Government of Victoria is taking a leadership role and helping industry groups work together to set the agenda and stimulate the discussion on what’s important and worth the effort. We are taking a co-design approach right from the start to make sure that we build a platform that meets the needs of users and stimulates growth in capability, innovation and skills. This means public, private and research sector stakeholders coming together to make Digital Twin Victoria their own. In fact, the project is set up in seven workstreams, of which the platform is only one. These
September-October 2021 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | 31
INTERVIEW
The Digital Twin Victoria Program will harness cutting-edge Digital Twin technology, rich 3D and 4D spatial data, AI, and sensor data to revolutionize how we plan, model and consult on the natural environments individual streams encompass a myriad of projects that contribute to an efficient ecosystem supporting the Digital Twin.
How can public policies help leverage the true potential of the Digital Twin technology? AR: There are several recent Australian government initiatives to help increase the uptake of digital twins across the country. First, Australia has embarked on an ambitious Digital Economy Strategy to make the country a leading global digital economy by 2030, along with an Australian Data Strategy to support use, value, custodianship, sharing, and security of both public and private data. Location information and digital twins are the key components to realizing this goal, as collectively the state governments of Australia hold a wealth of authoritative data on the country’s geography, population, infrastructure, health, employment, land, and environment. A crucial aspect of our public policies is focused on opening up capabilities for decision-makers to connect, access and analyze those data assets. Continued government support for digital and location information is critical to the success of digital twins. Having location data concepts, such as digital twins embedded in the Australian Data Strategy will help ensure there is continued recognition, drive and
support behind the importance of location information. Second, improvements in data sharing will also be key to the success of a National Digital Twin in Australia. This is why many in the spatial sector welcomed the signing of the Intergovernmental Agreement on Data Sharing by the National Cabinet on July 9, 2021. The agreement mandates all jurisdictions to share public sector data with one another as a default position in a way that is secure, safe, lawful and ethical. The agreement recognizes data as a shared national asset and aims to maximize its value to deliver better policies and services for Australians. The agreement applies to a wide scope of public sector data, including location information. Future work will likely focus on sharing of data between digital twins and related technologies. Finally, the 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan sets out the infrastructure challenges and opportunities for the next 15 years and the solutions required to drive productivity growth, maintain and enhance our standard of living, and ensure our cities and regions remain world class. The plan recommends that sectors involved in infrastructure adopt digital as a default position to accelerate the use of digital twins and other related technologies. It
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also recommends that 100% of government-funded projects incorporate a Digital Twin within the next 10 to 15 years.
Can you give examples of a few challenges in building and maintaining these digital models? MH: With so much data and so many possibilities, a key challenge is prioritizing use cases. This is why we are very focused on developing a strong strategic approach early in the program, so we make sure we are putting our efforts in the right places, working closely with stakeholders, co-designing with our users, and making sure the Digital Twin delivers on their needs. The geographic scale of spatial digital twins is also a significant challenge. Large scale, high resolution imagery and point clouds are expensive and remote areas that require sensing technology can lack nearby fundamental infrastructure such as power. A further challenge is that spatial digital twins are the aggregation of datasets from different providers, many of whom are at different stages of their digital journey, which means that data governance, availability and performance can be inconsistent. Digital Twin management is also really complex, especially with a distributed data model. A broken data feed can impact a range of users, and the cause is often beyond the control of the owners. Working with partners to ensure standardized solutions serving data is the best approach.
POLICY MATTERS
Virtual Models for Real Development In the past few years, the Digital Twin technology has attracted the attention of several countries around the world, prompting them to use digital replicas of the physical environment for better social, economic, and environmental outcomes. By Avneep Dhingra and Snehil Manohar Singh
I
n a Forbes article in 2017, Thomas Kaiser, then SAP Senior Vice President of IoT, was quoted saying, “Digital twins are becoming a business imperative, covering the entire lifecycle of an asset or process and forming the foundation for connected products and services. Companies that fail to respond will be left behind.” Kaiser’s
assessment was highly accurate, and it holds true not just for companies but even countries. In the last few years, several nations around the world have adopted the Digital Twin technology for better infrastructure development, risk assessment, predictive maintenance, real-time remote monitoring, team collaboration, financial decision-making, and
many other reasons. Let’s look at some of these countries.
Better returns In the United Kingdom, the Centre for Digital Built Britain, a partnership between the University of Cambridge and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, has been working on the National Digital
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POLICY MATTERS
The National Digital Twin program (NDTp) runs the Digital Twin Hub, a collaborative and supportive web-enabled community for those who own or are developing digital twins within the built environment Aligning a Digital Framework Task Group — to provide coordination and alignment among key players. Under NDTp, the Digital Framework Task Group (DFTG) was set up as an advisory body, which includes senior leaders from the industry, academia, and the government. The program is believed to be a key step in the digital transformation of the infrastructure and construction sectors in the UK, and hopes to generate social, economic, business, and environmental benefits. The NDTp runs the Digital Twin Hub, a collaborative and supportive web-enabled community for those who own or are developing Digital twins within the built environment.
Photo Credit: CGA Simulation
Twin program (NDTp) since 2018. The program was initiated to deliver key recommendations of the National Infrastructure Commission’s 2017 Data for the Public Good report. NDTp was launched to improve the way infrastructure is built, managed, operated, and eventually decommissioned. Its core objectives include: Enabling a National Digital Twin — an ecosystem of connected digital twins to foster better outcomes from the built environment. Delivering an Information Management Framework — to ensure secure resilient datasharing and effective information management.
The UK government has been using the Digital Twin technology to plan 5G networks 34 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2021
To demonstrate the power of connected digital twins, Anglian Water, BT, and UK Power Networks are currently working together with NDTp on a Climate Resilience Demonstrator (CReDo). The three utility providers will build a Digital Twin across energy, water, and telecom networks to provide a practical example of how connected data can improve climate adaptation and resilience. “We are really excited for what we can deliver through CReDo: demonstration that connected digital twins can enable increased climate resilience, and that collaboration across a team that spans industry, academia, and government forms the pieces of the puzzle that unlock solutions to reaching net zero,” Sarah Hayes, CReDo Project Lead, was quoted as saying. NDTp is expected to eventually generate benefits worth £7 billion ($8.12 billion) per year for the UK, according to the Netherlands Geolocation Economy report by Geospatial World.
Better visualization In Australia, Digital Twin technology is being leveraged by several states for better visualization, which can support administrative and business decision-making. For instance, Telstra, an Australian telecommunications and technology company, will build a proof-ofconcept spatial Digital Twin of New South Wales (NSW). The digital replica will help the NSW government to react to natural disasters, including wildfires. According to reports, Telstra will collaborate with WSP, AAM, Veris, Bentley Systems and Koordinates
Photo Credit: CGA Simulation
In Australia, the Digital Twin technology is being leveraged by several states for better visualization, which can support administrative and business decision-making
to build the Digital Twin. The group has bagged a contract worth AU$1.86 million ($1.35 million) for the project. “Australia is a highly urbanized country, yet many of our nation’s challenges occur in and around our regions and in the interactions between cities and regions. The Digital Twin technology is important to Australia because we see the opportunity to apply it to model changes and create impacts in the wider landscape beyond our buildings and cities,” says Alison Rose, Chief of Place, Space and Communities Division, Geoscience Australia. Recently, the Government of Victoria announced a record investment in Digital Twin technology and spatial innovation, committing AU$37.4 million ($27.14 million) to the Digital Twin Victoria program. The initiative will harness cutting-edge Digital Twin technology, rich 3D
and 4D spatial data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), sensor data, and more, to revolutionize how the administration plans, models, and consults on the built and natural environments. The program encompasses seven workstreams — advanced Earth Observation, enhanced disaster response, utilities, asset management, faster subdivision registrations, automated approvals, and the Digital Twin Victoria platform. “The combined power of these workstreams will help facilitate better, data-driven decisions about the impact of change on our communities and the environment,” says Melissa Harris, Chief Executive, Land Use, Victoria. She adds that the Government of Victoria is taking a leadership role and helping industry groups work together to set the agenda and stimulate the discussion on what’s important and worth the effort.
Better planning Singapore, one of the most densely populated countries in the world, has seen significant vertical development over the years. The vertical development meant that traditional 2D town planning maps made way for high-resolution 3D maps, eventually leading to a dynamic 3D model called “Virtual Singapore”. Launched in 2014, the Virtual Singapore platform acts as a Digital Twin of the citystate and enables urban planners to test solutions without taking too many risks. The S$73 million ($54 million) project is led by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and is based on the 3D topographical data from Singapore Land Authority (SLA), the country’s national mapping agency. The platform also integrates geometric and image data from different public agencies, 2D data and information from existing geospatial and
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POLICY MATTERS
present data in 2D and 3D forms for the authorities to monitor coastal and sea activities in real time and plan building projects. The digital model stores and presents data from 11 government agencies, including national water agency PUB and the Housing Board. Among other things, GeoSpace-Sea allows users to view and analyze the seabed with 3D images.
Photo Credit: waterbriefingglobal
Singapore has been efficiently using the Digital Twin technology for urban planning
Over the years, several digital twins have been built across the Netherlands for different reasons
non-geospatial platforms, and legacy and real-time data from scores of sensors deployed all across the city-state as part of the Smart Nation initiative.
In 2019, the authorities in Singapore started developing GeoSpace-Sea, a virtual twin of the country’s land and coastal waters. GeoSpace-Sea can map out and
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Better future The Netherlands was one of the first countries to begin digital mapping in 1994. Over the years, several digital twins have been built across the Netherlands, including a digital replica of the port of Rotterdam, the biggest port in Europe and the sixth biggest in the world by annual cargo throughput. The project used emerging technologies like Internet of Things (IoT) and AI and was a collaborative effort that included the Rotterdam Port Authority, Axians, Cisco, IBM, and others. In the case of a Digital Twin for Amsterdam, the focus has been on mobility (data from traffic and public transport), human environment (air quality), and energy transition (using data from solar panels installed on buildings). For the Dutch mission to create a Digital Twin, which is called the Nationale Digitale Tweeling Voor De Fysieke Leefomgeving or National Digital Twins for the Physical Environment (DTFL), Hexagon’s Geosystems division and Cyclomedia have partnered to host a complete virtual representation of the country that is called 3DNL. “The partnership with Hexagon enables Cyclomedia to create an
innovative 3D data product such as 3DNL,” Frank Pauli, CEO, Cyclomedia, was quoted as saying. The estimated size of the investment in the DTFL ecosystem, and other market instruments amounts to €41.6 million ($48.2 million). “In the Netherlands, the authorities have invested quite a lot in making the basic layer of information available. Simultaneously, a lot of work has happened on the digitalization front. We are gradually getting rid of silos and are making processes smarter and more efficient. We see great steps to establish a national Digital Twin, connecting all the dots. This program is of national and European interest,” says Bart Brink, Global Program Director, Digital Twin, Royal HaskoningDHV, and Chair of the Digital Twin Working
Thanks to the potential use cases of these digital replicas, the Digital Twin market, which was estimated to be over $3 billion in 2020, is expected to be worth over $45 billion by 2026 Group within Buildings Smart International.
Better innovation In the US, several government departments and agencies have been using digital twins for various needs. For instance, the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) of the Energy Department uses the technology to develop next-generation nuclear reactors. These nuclear reactors will run autonomously and be highly secure while operating with a level of monitoring, control, and supervision that has reportedly never been experienced. Further,
all three military branches in the country — the Army, Navy, and Air Force — are either using or are in the process of exploring digital twins to improve weapons’ platforms and systems’ maintenance and readiness. Digital twins have also been used to assess cyber vulnerabilities within Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites and systems. These digital models have also found use in the healthcare sector. In order to help doctors find optimal treatments for certain lung cancer patients, the National Institute of Health and the National Cancer Institute are conducting extensive research on Digital Twin applications.
Photo Credit: The American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Thanks to the potential use cases of these digital replicas, the Digital Twin market, which was estimated to be over $3 billion in 2020, is expected to be worth over $45 billion by 2026. Further, new standards will ensure that the new Digital Twin applications are more compatible, secure, and scalable. Together these developments will mean more countries adopting this transformative technology in the years to come. Avneep Dhingra Associate Editor Policy & Public Affairs avneep@geospatialworld.net
Snehil Manohar Singh In the US, the Idaho National Laboratory of the Energy Department is using the Digital Twin technology to develop next-generation nuclear reactors
Sr. Sub Editor
snehil@geospatialworld.net
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INTERVIEW
GEOSPATIAL DATA CAN AMPLIFY CIRCULAR ECONOMY Location data, combined with other digital technologies, helps in tracking the identity, position, and status of products, which is key to maximizing the value of materials in each stage of their lifecycle, says Dr. Rudiger Ahrend, Head, Economic Analysis, Data & Statistics, OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities. By Meenal Dhande Why do we need circular economy policies now more than ever? A circular economy is a model of production and consumption which involves sharing, reusing, refurbishing, and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible, so that the lifecycle of products is extended. An OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) model based on current government policies from around the world has shown that, by 2060, growing incomes and populations will drive a strong increase in global materials’ demand. Worldwide, the environmental impact of extraction and processing of key materials — including biomass, fossil fuels, metals, and non-metallic minerals — is projected to double at the very least. Policies that assist in reducing the worldwide consumption of raw materials, and consequently their extraction and processing, will help avoid a wide range of environmental impacts.
Materials extraction and processing are responsible for 71% of greenhouse gas emissions (from fossil fuel use for energy supply, agriculture, and industry) and accounts for substantial water, soil, and air pollution. For example, plastic production and waste generation roughly doubled between 2000 and 2015, resulting in multiple environmental impacts, including high-energy use, pollution from landfills and incineration, and impact on ecosystems from uncontrolled disposal of waste, such as marine litter. Metal extraction and processing cause soil acidification, degradation of water flow and toxic effects on ecosystems and humans. The European Commission estimates that more than 90% of biodiversity loss and water stress come from resource extraction and processing. The 2020 OECD Regional Outlook outlines how cities can contribute to circularity. Not only climate change, but the potential for new jobs has motivated
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cities’ and regions’ actions on the circular economy as described in The Circular Economy in Cities and Regions report of the OECD.
The concept of a circular economy is fast gaining traction in the developed world. Where do developing countries stand in this respect? Developing and emerging countries are extracting and processing an ever larger share of materials. A large share of this serves to meet consumption in high-income countries. In addition, some developing and emerging countries are catching up with the living standards in high-income countries. This is, of course, more than welcome, but unfortunately it also illustrates the unsustainable nature of material consumption trends worldwide. High-income countries will need to show the way in circular economy practices, take into account the environmental footprint of materials use wherever it arises, and work with developing
countries to incorporate circular economy practices, including through pricing-in environmental impacts of raw materials use.
Can you throw light on a few businesses that are based on circularity and the kind of new business models we are likely to see in the future? There are many businesses running on the circular economy model. For example, steel production from recycled scrap reduces raw iron use in Europe substantially, lowering emissions and energy consumption sharply. Repair and reuse services are also emerging for consumption goods. But many barriers are holding up large-scale deployment of such practices, including the fact that environmental costs of material processing are not included in the prices we pay for new goods. Digital technologies will foster innovative circular economy business models in the provision of manufacturing goods-as-a-service. For example, real-time on-demand car ride-sharing can meet daily mobility needs provided by cars in cities, lowering the number of vehicles by more than 90%, as well as congestion and CO2 emissions by more than 30%. How can geospatial data and technology, especially location information, enhance the circular economy? Geospatial data can enhance the circular economy through a more efficient management of production and consumption processes, as well as that of public service
There are many businesses running on the circular economy model. For example, steel production from recycled scrap reduces raw iron use in Europe substantially, lowering emissions and energy consumption sharply. Repair and reuse services are also emerging for consumption goods delivery. On the production side, location data, combined with other digital technologies, helps in tracking the identity, position, and status of products, which is key to maximizing the value of materials in each stage of their lifecycle — including by calling for maintenance or recycling of the products. On the consumption side, geolocation data is essential for improving economic and resource efficiency, particularly for underused assets. In many cities, we can see examples where location data can act as enablers of the circular economy. Car and bike sharing systems, as well as smart public transport, require geolocation and real-time data to be effective. Indeed, a growing number of city governments are leveraging digitalization — including geospatial data — to achieve sustainability and circular economy objectives. For example, through geo-localized smart bins, authorities can know in real-time when trash bins need to be emptied, and thus improve waste management. The OECD is currently working on a framework to measure the performance of smart cities in terms of the impact of their digital tools, which exploit
geospatial data on different sustainability outcomes.
Can you tell us a little about your work at the Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE), and your professional journey prior to joining OECD? Prior to joining OECD, I worked as an academic researcher and independent consultant. In the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities, I head a division that specifically deals with economic and data analysis, as well as with creating statistics. In doing so, we are increasingly relying on geospatial data. We have created the OECD Laboratory for Geospatial Analysis (also known as the Geospatial Lab) which is a platform that proposes to connect people from different organizations, including academia, government agencies, the private sector, and statistical offices, to develop and disseminate policy-relevant analyses based on geospatial information. The idea is to encourage widespread adoption of geospatial data in shaping policies that make a difference in tackling today’s place-based problems.
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SPECIAL FEATURE
TECH TO POWER CIRCULAR ECONOMY Geospatial technologies, supported by enhanced visualization through digital twins, can help in monitoring the entire lifecycle of products. By Meenal Dhande
I
n April 2021 in the Netherlands, when United Nations climate officials congregated at the World Circular Economy Forum, their key conclusion was that shifting swiftly to a circular economy is essential to achieving the climate goals agreed on by the international community at the Paris Climate Agreement. This would also accelerate the process of rebuilding the world’s economies stronger, greener and better.
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A circular economy, also called ‘circularity’, is an economic system that employs reuse, sharing, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing, and recycling to create a closed-loop system, thereby minimizing the use of resource inputs and limiting waste, pollution, and carbon emissions. The idea of circularity is often linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and is accelerated by digital innovation. The concept of a circular economy goes back to 1966, when American economist Kenneth E. Boulding wrote about the ‘cyclical’ system of production in his book titled The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth. The term circular economy first appeared in 1988 in a book called The Economics of Natural Resources. Over the years, the concept of circularity has evolved, and is widely discussed
today due to the climate crisis facing our world.
Economics of circularity As per a 2015 book titled Waste to Wealth by Accenture Strategy, a circular economy could generate $4.5 trillion of additional economic output by 2030. The book also suggests that advances in digital technologies will underpin the emergence of a circular economy. “While a number of pioneers have achieved successful examples of the circular economy, new digital technologies now offer an opportunity for all companies to put circular business models at the core of their global strategies,” writes Jakob Rutqvist, Senior Manager, Accenture Strategy, and co-author of Waste to Wealth. The same year, another report by WRAP and the Green Alliance titled Employment and the Circular Economy: Job Creation in a More Resource-efficient Britain examines
different public policy scenarios leading up to 2030. The report states that with no policy change, nearly 200,000 new jobs will be created in the UK, reducing unemployment by 54,000; and a more aggressive policy scenario could create 500,000 new jobs and permanently reduce unemployment by 102,000. In 2013, Towards the Circular Economy: Economic and Business Rationale for an Accelerated Transition, a report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and McKinsey & Company, highlighted the potential for significant benefits of the circular economy across the European Union (EU). It suggested that a subset of the EU manufacturing sector could realize net materials cost savings worth up to $630 billion annually by 2025 — stimulating economic activity in the areas of product development, remanufacturing, and refurbishment.
The circular economy concept Source: Journal of Cleaner Production
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SPECIAL FEATURE
The smart circular economy framework establishes a link between digital technologies and sustainable resource management Source: The smart circular economy: A digital-enabled circular strategies framework for manufacturing companies. Journal of Business Research
Digital circular economy Digitalization is increasingly becoming a driving force behind a majority of industries. Since a circular economy aims to optimize resource use within sectors, there is a clear connection between the two. Modern-day digital technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Blockchain are critical enablers for upscaling the circular economy. In March 2020, the European Commission adopted the new Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP), which is one of the main building blocks of the European Green Deal — a strategy for sustainable growth. The crucial role of digital technologies in accelerating the transition to a circular economy is strongly emphasized in CEAP.
Geospatial for circular economy Geospatial technologies, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Location Intelligence (LI) sit right at the heart of the circular economy, which requires products to be connected digitally to the manufacturer so that the entire product lifecycle can be monitored. The complex circular networks connecting suppliers and partners too need to be seamlessly managed, and geospatial technology, complemented by advances in digital technologies (especially the combination of mobile, machineto-machine, and data analytics) plays a significant role in enabling circular economy practices. Further, GIS maps can help reveal how many products are in use in a given area. As the number of products rises, marketing
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companies can initiate a buyback campaign — geo-targeted to a particular group of owners at specific phases of the ownership cycle. The rebought products can then be sold again or fed back into the production cycle as raw material for manufacturing new products. Also, organizations can share an intelligent map of recycling drop-off sites with customers via a website or mobile app. The New York City has taken this approach, showing residents locations where they can drop off several tons of the 200,000 tons of clothing they usually send to the landfill in an average year. In 2018, SAP organized a design competition called the ‘Plastics Challenge’, to encourage the use of technology to eliminate single-use plastic waste. The project began with consumer research tracking the use of
plastic of a few dozen UK citizens who were willing to share data around their daily engagement with plastics for a month. This data was used as a basis for a multi-day design thinking workshop with 25 large companies, including Coca-Cola, Visa, and Unilever, to develop solutions based on the reality facing consumers. The contest led to the development of a smartphone app that uses Machine Learning (ML) to help people identify different kinds of packaging materials. The phone’s geolocation service determines where to recycle the materials best, based on local programs. Another prototype embedded a chip in a reusable coffee cup to function as both a payment and loyalty rewards system, incentivizing cup reuse. The Asociacion de Cooperativas Argentinas (ACA), a farming organization in Argentina, developed an open digital platform
for their farmers and suppliers to help produce more with less cost and environmental impact. The technology challenge was to create a system that could analyze multiple data sources in real time, gain visibility into each stage of farming, and deliver automatic recommendations to farmers. With geospatial data from satellites and drones, ACA can now monitor ambient soil conditions, indicating arable land's potential productivity. This data can then be combined with other sources, such as weather and business data, to understand real-time requirements for farmers and make intelligent recommendations.
Lush Cosmetics tasked themselves with creating a waterless, signage and package-free shop. The company has developed a digital solution, the Lush Labs app, allowing customers to identify package-free products using Augmented Reality (AR). The app shows the user ingredients, benefits, and video demos. A feature called Lush Lens lets customers identify and learn about a product by taking a photo of it. Similarly, Topolytics, a UK-based solutions provider, created an app for real-time tracking of waste flows in the country. The app is now also used
Compute
Digital twins make real-world assets machine-readable, which means that AI can be used to optimize their design, manufacture, and operations Source: Accenture
GIS maps can help reveal how many products are in use in a given area. As the number of these products rises, marketing managers of companies can initiate a buyback campaign — geotargeted to a particular group of owners at specific phases of the ownership cycle
Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, Machine Learning and Simulation
Innovation
Virtual Twin
Optimization
A sophisticated representation of the physical asset based on real-world data on materials, usage, external conditions, maintenance etc.
Engineering, Operations and Meta (Real-time data inputs enabled by IoT)
Physical Assets in
Development
Construction
Utilization
Dismantling
September-October 2021 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | 43
SPECIAL FEATURE
in India and other countries. It uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) labels to track the movement of garbage via itemlevel digital identities. The system tracks waste from households, local authorities, businesses, and the construction sector. The data is analyzed along with other sources, including invoicing records, weighbridge and bin weighing systems, vehicle telematics, ‘internet of bins’ sensors, and intelligent labeling systems for an informed and holistic waste management strategy.
Digital twins for circularity Just like geospatial, the Digital Twin technology significantly supports the transition towards
a more circular economy. Accenture and Dassault Systèmes have partnered to advance the potential of digital twins. The result is a comprehensive report examining related use cases in several industries, including consumer goods, mobility, and construction. For example, Aden, an integrated facility management service provider, created a digital replica of one of its commercial centers in Chengdu, China. The twin monitors, aggregates, and analyzes data to plan and execute inspection, maintenance, and repair activities. Energy consumption under different operating conditions is predicted and optimized. Expected benefits include reduced annual energy
"The linear 'Take - Make - Dispose' system, which depletes natural resources and generates waste, is deeply flawed & can be productively replaced by a restorative model in which waste does not exist as such but is only food for the next cycle"
ELLEN MACARTHUR
Founder, Ellen MacArthur Foundation
consumption by 20% plus lower water usage and waste generation. Sanofi’s Framingham Lighthouse facility, a digitally enabled, continuous manufacturing facility, is another example cited in the Accenture report. Virtual or digital twins optimize small manufacturing through the use of real-time data capture and analysis. The whole industrial process is digitalized and paperless, and is 80 times more productive than a traditional factory. As challenges concerning food security and climate change mount for our societies, the need to adopt sustainable economic practices will only increase, thereby creating an opportunity for geospatial and Digital Twin communities to work together closely in supporting a circular economy. Meenal Dhande
The World Economic Forum has estimated there could be materials saving of over $1 trillion, from material reuse, recycling and upcycling 44 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2021
Sr. Assistant Editor Defense & Intelligence meenal@geospatialworld.net
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CASE STUDY
Taking Airborne LiDAR Surveying to Next Level
RIEGL VQ-1560 II, a state-of-the-art airborne LiDAR, helped RealWorld to analyze geologically hazardous areas in Taiwan.
F
or a relatively small island, Taiwan is incredibly mountainous. The reasons for this aren’t hard to understand — the island is located at the convergent boundary of the Philippine Sea Plate and the Eurasian Plate. The country has dramatic topography, and the climate varies from region to region. There are 268 high mountains over 3,000m in Taiwan, and in the low-altitude areas, there are dense subtropical jungles, both of which pose a challenge for airborne LiDAR surveying and mapping.
Real world, real challenges RealWorld Surveying and Geomatics Corp. is the largest surveying and geographic information service provider in Taiwan. To expand and streamline the airborne surveying business, it established RealWorld Aviation Corp. in 2020. RealWorld uses the
latest equipment and solutions, such as digital aerial mapping cameras, RIEGL airborne LiDAR, RIEGL mobile LiDAR, RIEGL terrestrial LiDAR, multibeam echo sounder, and other advanced equipment and software for aerial, land, and bathymetric surveying. The company is dedicated to high-accuracy data acquisition and provides Geographic Information System (GIS) platform development and analysis services to various government departments. Taiwan has an active tectonic zone with active orogeny and is also prone to typhoons. RealWorld has been using airborne LiDAR data to analyze geologically hazardous areas for more than ten years, but was facing weather, topography and other constraints.
State-of-the-art solution While natural or geographic issues can’t be helped, the use of
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modern technology can assist in finding solutions. To overcome the challenges faced in surveying and mapping, RealWorld chose RIEGL VQ-1560 II, a state-of-the-art airborne LiDAR, which is suitable for working in high-altitude areas. The unique benefits of RIEGL VQ-1560 II include the large field of view (FOV), cross-fire scanning method, high pulse repetition rate (PRR), point cloud with high point density, and uniform distribution, which makes penetration in vegetation easy. These point clouds can be used in other applications, such as 3D city models, transportation, engineering, forestry, power industry, etc. Since time and cost are the most critical factors for any project, the VQ-1560 II high-performance airborne LiDAR helped in overcoming these constraints — the scanning operations could be completed by only 40% of the flight
RIEGL VQ-1560 II gives excellent penetration over dense forest
Satisfied customers
“High-efficiency scanning capability of VQ1560 II makes high definition LiDAR no longer exclusive to drones. Compared with drone’s take-off and landing, which is limited to high terrain relief in a mountainous area, a manned aircraft equipped with VQ-1560 II can be used to acquire large-scale high-density point clouds. Taiwan has built one-meter DTM data for the whole island. However, as the pioneers of surveying and mapping in Taiwan, we hope that we can compete with the world’s top surveying and mapping companies.” CHI-FENG WANG
President, RealWorld Surveying and Geomatics Corp.
“RealWorld now has its aircraft, VQ-1560 II and many years of point cloud processing experience. We hope to introduce foreign experience in the use of high-density point clouds (HD LiDAR) in various fields in Taiwan, including power line inspection, smart cities, water conservancy, disaster prevention, etc. We hope that through the procurement of this high-performance instrument, we can once again promote the upgrade of airborne LiDAR specifications in the Taiwan surveying and mapping market.” YANG-TSE HUANG
President, RealWorld Aviation Corp.
lines compared to the previous sensor. This also improved the overall flight efficiency. In the past, the cost of an airborne LiDAR survey was about 30% to 40% of the entire project. Through high-efficiency scanning, it is expected that the spending will be reduced to 20% in the future, which will generate more profits, and give more time for data post-processing. The VQ-1560 II also provides ease of use to the surveyors as it is lightweight and has hassle-free installation. The design of the operation interface is very intuitive and user-friendly. The post-processing software also provides corresponding accuracy reports, suitable for delivering the buyers’ exquisite and perfect deliverables.
Seamless training and delivery RIEGL delivered the VQ-1560 II in April 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the RIEGL experts could not visit Taiwan to conduct installation and training. Therefore, Linkfast, the official distributor of RIEGL in Taiwan, established the hardware and software training plan according to the instrument delivery and airworthiness certification schedule. RIEGL systematically provided web training from theory and operation to data processing for hardware and software. Linkfast acted as the bridge of communication between RealWorld and RIEGL to ensure seamless training and delivery. September-October 2021 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | 47
INTERVIEW
ROLE OF LOCATION DATA AND ANALYTICS IN REAL ESTATE ACTIVITY In the coming years, it will be strange to see a real estate company not having an area dedicated to data and analytics. The companies that do not have data and technology at the center of decision-making may not exist in the next five years, says Jorge Valero, Director, Data and Digital Transformation, AEDAS Homes, Spain. By Supriya Nayak
How important is location data for business decision-making? We are a decentralized company with six territorial directorates comprising professionals from Catalonia and Aragon, Levante and Balearic Islands, Andalusia, Costa del Sol, Center, and North. The housing market in Spain is very heterogeneous — there are more than 8,000 municipalities and each one can have different dynamics. This decentralization is a major reason for our success. We are familiar with every market and are aware what customers want in each enclave. Our decisions are based on two key factors — in-depth local knowledge through our human resources, and data and quality indicators based on our own activity and from external sources. In this context, location data plays a key role as it allows us to know about real estate activity in an area and the competition there, vehicle traffic, patterns of movement of people, weather, and where supermarkets or leisure and work centers are located. For example, we have mapped more than 100,000 soils and raw materials, and 48 | www.gwprime.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2021
have identified dozens of parameters, many of which are exclusive. This allows us to have them located, categorized, and qualified, so that we have unique and quality information about the investment area. Having geolocated data flows allows us to develop solutions that facilitate geospatial analysis, which enables investment opportunity analysis teams and the commercial management to make informed decisions. Until not so long ago, data only allowed us to see what had happened. By adding more and better sources of data and applying data science, we can now understand why.
What are the main applications of location data and analytics for your company? We have experienced an exciting evolution in the use of analytical tools. We started by generating small data marts in a local environment and connecting them to Excel files to analyze information from another prism. At present, we have a three-layered infrastructure with resources dedicated exclusively to the extracttransform-load (ETL) processes, Machine Learning and data storage and security. In the past, owning Location Intelligence (LI) tools was complicated, expensive, and required many resources. Further, a large amount of data was not geotagged. Fortunately, it has now become easy to access agile LI tools and high-quality data from external sources. We use PowerBI with Mapbox to offer mapping solutions, and thus take advantage of using the
Having geolocated data flows allows us to develop solutions that facilitate geospatial analysis, which enables investment opportunity analysis teams and the commercial management to make informed decisions. same infrastructure for all data solutions. To do this, we have developed a tool that uses our own data of more than 100,000 plots in the main areas of Spain and combines it with the exclusive information we generate on a daily basis. This volume and diversity of information allows us not only to describe reality but to generate models that give the user unique indicators to make decisions.
Please tell us about the Business Intelligence (BI) platform that you use. We are currently using Microsoft’s PowerBI solution. We have worked with other tools in the past, but the combination of versatility, simplicity, monthly updates with new functions, integration with the rest of the 365 suite, renewed web environment and its APP made us choose this solution last year. At a strategic level, we seek to have the greatest flexibility and therefore, we have separated ETL (Extract Transform and Load) and data science work from the visualization tool (PowerBI). This allows us to have agility when it comes to answering questions concerning business, operations, investments, and financial areas. In our data warehouse, we manage thousands of refuted indicators of both the activity of AEDAS Homes
and the real estate market in areas where we have, or will have, a presence.
What kind of returns have you received from investing in location analytics? The main range of action for us is based on two pillars: reducing decision-making time and lowering uncertainty. For our activity, we do not seek return on investment in terms of a new business or sale of services based on these tools or data. The use of such unique tools allows us to better understand an area or a client or detect significant changes in demand. This helps us differentiate ourselves from the competition, be more scalable, and make faster decisions with more quality information. As a company, we have multiplied home deliveries by seven times in the last four years. Today, we have more than 7,000 unique buyers and over 85,000 people have expressed interest in our homes. We have more quality data that can support business growth. Despite being around for only five years, we have one of the most complete and powerful databases. To give an example, we have identified tens of thousands of soils and have classified them
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INTERVIEW
The companies that do not have data and technology at the center of decision-making may not exist in the next five years to build a Location Intelligence solution that allows us to know the status of the soil in a specific area and estimate the capacity to carry out construction or obtain licenses. We combine this information with other data sources to pre-analyze an area and offer our analysts the best possible information in an easy-to-use solution.
How has location data helped you in predictive analytics? Until recently, we focused on describing what happens, describing it homogeneously for all locations and in an automated way. This allowed us to figure out the data we have, enrich it and understand how it can help us answer predictive questions. We have already made some progress on this front, but it is undoubtedly the biggest challenge in the coming years. When you make reliable predictive models, organizations, management teams and executives add them into their workflows. It is useless to make predictive models if they cannot be put to work and provide differential value to each team. The real estate sector in Spain is strongly impacted by what happens in other markets and industries and, therefore, we have generated
a solution that allows us to visualize the main macroeconomic indicators of a dozen countries. This ease of access to international information allows us to know what is happening at the economic and real estate level, so that we can make informed decisions.
How have you addressed some of the key challenges with localization analytics? We analyze hundreds of spatial variables, including demographic, competition, and mobility data to quickly gain an information advantage in our processes. This allows us, for example, to cluster our stakeholders and clients to offer them a unique and differential experience, or to have a very detailed analysis and knowledge in an area where we do not yet have a presence, and the ability to analyze new investment opportunities or monitor changes in the variables that activate or deactivate the demand in each municipality. The analysis of the internal processes of the company allows us to pay attention to even small inefficiencies. With data analysis, we have significantly reduced the amount of time it takes to identify and solve incidents and improve our processes. We have been able to overcome a major challenge through the development of a solution that allows us to analyze our raw material — the soil on which we promote our houses. Every area has a different soil type and is affected by different reasons. This local knowledge is powered by the Location Intelligence solutions.
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How do you expect the real estate Location Intelligence market to grow in the next five years? In the coming years, it will be strange to see a real estate company not having an area dedicated to data and analytics. The companies that do not have data and technology at the center of decision-making may not exist in the next five years. It will be necessary to have sufficient data, both public and private, and with sufficient quality that supports all the applicable regulations regarding data protection. In my opinion, more analytical profiles trained in data science than computer science will be required, thanks to the advancement of low-code solutions and geospatial analysis tools designed for analysts. However, this data will represent a challenge: how do we extract stories out of it, and how do we tell those stories? In order to understand how hundreds or thousands of variables correlate, we will see how Artificial Intelligence and specifically automated, or initially supervised learning, will represent one of the most important changes when working with data. We will see how data science will be deeply driven by technology. Machine Learning has been in existence for more than 50 years but it’s now that we have the technology to support it. In conclusion, it will be about data-driven strategies and the use of AI to analyze data and automatically respond to complex and personalized problems.
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