Digital twin deployments will exceed 500 cities by 2025
According to the findings from global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research’s Smart Cities and Smart Spaces quarterly update report, digital twin deployments will exceed 500 by 2025.
With digital twins having made their appearance in cities over the last few years, mainly in the form of pilots showcasing limited capabilities, their more widespread deployment as multi-purpose urban decision and management tools is now imminent, not in the least driven by COVID-19 requirements in terms of achieving increased resilience levels and optimized asset and demand-response resource management.
“Real-time 3D models of a cities’ built environment allow scenario analysis through the simulation of the potential impact of natural disasters like flooding, adopt generative design principles for new city developments optimizing energy savings and solar capacity, and saving costs by operating cities more efficiently and effectively,” explains Dominique Bonte, Vice President End Markets at ABI Research.
“The digital twin ecosystem system activity is growing quickly with more suppliers announcing more deployments in more cities. Vendors like Dassault Systèmes and Engie subsidiary Siradel are paving the way for extending urban digital twins to marketplaces and opening access to key metrics and dashboards to the citizens themselves, increasing their overall involvement and helping gain approval of city government decisions and policies,” Bonte says.
Cityzenith recently donated its SmartWorldPro2 digital twin platform to selected cities to help them become carbon neutral as part of the global ‘Clean Cities – Clean Future’ campaign. Bentley Systems partnered with Microsoft to integrate Azure IoT Digital Twins and Azure Maps into its iTwins platform. The City of Helsinki won the Bentley Systems award for its Digital City Synergy project aimed at helping the city improve collaboration and get more value from its city models.
