8 minute read
Seeing double: The landscape of digital twins
Land iQ © WSP AUSTRALIA PTY LTD
With the rapid expansion of urban areas, sustainable, efficient and resilient city planning is crucial. Emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and digital twins, are revolutionising design, management and interaction in the built environment. Together, these technologies are underlining the need for landscape disciplines to collaborate digitally within the construction industry. While Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been a stepping stone in this journey, it is digital twins that now capture the imagination and meet the growing demands of clients, alongside rapid advancements in AI.
Digital representations offer a more compatible, responsive and user-focused approach to designing the environments we live in. The primary challenge in applying the technology to landscape practice lies in the unique intrinsic characteristics of landscapes and their interrelations. So how can digital twins support a landscape-led design approach, improving data management and delivery?
Taking a step back to how BIM emerged, this technology has historically been connected to aerospace design and development, aiding in visualisation, performance testing and design optimisation when building aircraft prototypes. The term ‘digital twin’ was then coined by NASA’s John Vickers in 2010, with NASA being a forerunner in adopting the technology. Today, NASA’s Earth System Digital Twins (ESDT) continue to merge models of both Earth and human systems with continuous observations and information systems, offering unified, detailed representations and forecasts for monitoring information and providing decision support.
Taking this across into landscape, Digital Futures in Landscape Design: A UK Perspective, by Mike Shilton CMLI, chair of the Landscape Institute Digital Practice Group, explores the role of BIM in reshaping the construction industry to address environmental challenges. It highlights how BIM supports design, construction and waste reduction and enhances decision-making processes. “All too often BIM is focused on delivering efficiencies and improvements during the design and construction phase of a project and we lose sight of where the most significant savings can be realised: the lifetime management and ongoing maintenance of the asset,” the article says. Indeed, with relevance across various industries, digital twins have the potential to create more sustainable, healthier environments. They can achieve greater efficiencies to minimise waste and emissions and enable data-driven decisions that improve the health and sustainability of urban green spaces. As Shilton’s article argues, “The digital twin concept not only uses the virtual model to build the real world, but through sensory feedback, becomes a real-time dashboard of how the asset is performing.”
Defining digital twins
At WSP Global, we define digital twins as a dynamic digital representation of the built and natural environment that can be used to plan, visualise, report on and control assets and operations.
Digital twins vary in complexity and capability based on an organisation’s digital maturity and desired outcomes, ranging from simple data visualisation tools to comprehensive platforms. WSP’s Digital Twin Guide applies three key dimensions: the size of the asset(s) to be twinned (Size), the asset life cycle stage (Lifecycle) and the maturity of systems and available data (Data Maturity). The interactive tool allows users to explore how a digital twin can benefit a specific project, asset, or group of projects or assets, providing practical insights into the application of digital twins in a professional context. Digital twins can be managed and adapted for different uses across project life cycles by integrating multiple data sources such as BIM models managed on common data environments (CDEs), survey data, GIS, point cloud models, reality data such as photogrammetry and others. The data is input into the digital twin and seamlessly combined with relevant information such as weather patterns, topography, biodiversity, plant species monitoring and land use data.
Landscape planning
Digital twins can be used to support planning applications and facilitate public consultations and work to bring together specialists in mobility, accessibility, health and safety for collaborative decision making. For example, in collaboration with Giraffe and Aerometrex, WSP Australia has developed Land iQ, a groundbreaking spatial tool to revolutionise land use planning for the local government. Land iQ is a dashboard that can be used to identify sites with a set of criteria, undertake site layouts and feasibility studies and make preliminary assessments of business cases. It assists strategic planning and development by analysing data from local to regional scales, helping planners to understand existing economic, social, demographic, cultural and environmental contexts. Land iQ is underpinned by over 40 land use typologies, enabling a consistent approach to scenario analysis across government.
Design and simulation
The models can then assist with data analysis and simulation during the design phase, interrogating the 3D model, design validation, clash detection, quality checks, improvements, data extractions, carbon footprint analysis and visualisation, informing decisions throughout construction phases.
In this fashion, WSP has developed a simulation workflow using iTwin and Unreal Engine to test the design before building it, using virtual reality (VR) and human-centred design (HCD) with end users. The method commences by converting BIM data into a VR digital twin. Subsequently, behavioural tests are developed, followed by expert design evaluation and refinement. Once refined, the model is ready for public consultation, assessment and analysis by behavioural scientists and recommendations. Finally, the design undergoes further refinement. This process can be tailored to projects and address design challenges in public spaces, such as accessibility, security and evacuation, wayfinding, environmental comfort including air, acoustics, wind, temperature, vibration, shading and delivery monitoring. At each stage of the process, the digital twin acts as the central tool of effective collaboration and decision-making.
Internet of Things
When discussing digital twins, we must consider their use in conjunction with the Internet of Things (IoT). IoTs have the potential to revolutionise city operations by enabling real-time monitoring, data collection and automation. By embedding sensors in physical objects and connecting them to the internet, the IoT enables a more targeted response to maintenance, for example by embedding moisture content sensors in soils and tree pits, which alert managers when watering is required.
For the Metro Tunnel Environment Monitoring Platform, a project involving the construction of a new 9km twin tunnel and five new stations underneath Melbourne’s central business district, at a cost of AU$11 billion, several environmental performance requirements were set. One of the station sites, Parkville, is surrounded by a range of sensitive environments including animal laboratories, radiotherapy machines, sensitive electron microscopes and medical and legal institutions. WSP, in collaboration with Arup, developed a plan to keep track of 132 categorised, labelled ecological requirements. Called the Metro Tunnel Environment Monitor, the system monitors noise, vibration and air quality so that the sensitive environments can be monitored. It uses a combination of digital twins and an IoT to make the validation possible, storing telemetry, analysing and processing data, providing easy access to raw data through a user-friendly interface, sending instant alerts and offering reporting workflows.
Looking ahead
Despite the potential that the IoT and digital twins offers landscape design and management, several challenges must be addressed to realise their full benefits. Unlike buildings, living systems are dynamic and constantly adapting to various factors, including weather, soil conditions and human activities, which can make data collection and analysis difficult. Moreover, deploying IoT sensors in outdoor environments presents challenges due to weather conditions and the potential difficulties involved in fixing them in strategic locations, where they are able to capture accurate and meaningful data.
But there are many opportunities for landscape architects to use the technologies. They can be used to simulate the impact of different landscape designs on local ecosystems, helping to create environments that support a diverse range of species. There is also huge potential to assess the benefits of green infrastructure, such as green roofs, rain gardens and urban forests. Projects could monitor plant biodiversity, shading and growth by combining multiple data sources and it is worth noting too that use of this technology does not have to be complex. For simple data tracking, a ‘dashboard’ can be built using a website, or a Microsoft PowerBI form linked to the data, making it universally accessible.
As digital twins evolve, their adaptability will encourage collective efforts to shape their use and align with industry-specific demands. By integrating these technologies into landscape management, professionals can unlock new opportunities to enhance the health and functionality of green space, while addressing critical environmental challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity and biodiversity loss. In a world where urbanisation and ecological pressures are increasingly required, the ability to integrate BIM, IoT and digital twins with living systems will be a critical factor in shaping future cities.
Giuliana Santos is a Landscape Designer and BIM Lead at WSP UK
