• PROJECTS
& DEVELOPMENTS
DIGITAL TWINS, FOR ALL Jannat Maqbool, Interim Executive Director – NZ, Smart Cities Council Australia New Zealand We have less than a decade left to make significant productivity, equity and sustainability gains for our communities, and the Smart Cities Council is going ‘all in’ on the enabling power of data activation, believing the digital twin is the superior approach.
A
s our cities and built environ-
Twin Summit and shared the Australia
ment focus on enabling better
New Zealand Digital Twin Strategy
services and value for citizens,
Draft Blueprint. It is now facilitating
delivering greater economic value,
the inaugural Digital Twin Challenge,
and achieving net zero greenhouse
positioning our region as a leader in
gas emissions from our assets, ad-
the global push to accelerate more
dressing these priorities will depend
productive, sustainable and liveable
on our ability to enhance our city and
built and natural environments
infrastructure planning processes,
through the leveraging of digital
as well as our methods for building
twins.
and operating assets, and delivering social services. This of course is pos-
So, what is a digital twin?
sible, but requires a new generation
The common definition for the digital
of tools, approaches and mindsets.
twin is ‘a digital replica of a physical
The Smart Cities Council believes the
thing’. The Centre for Digital Built
Digital twin is exactly this. With this in mind, in 2020, the Smart Cities Council launched the Australia New Zealand Digital Twin Hub and released the Digital Twin Guidance Note. A year later, the Council hosted the New Zealand Digital
Digital Twin:
a realistic digital representation of something physical. What distinguishes a digital twin from any other digital model is its connection to the physical twin. SURVEYING+SPATIAL
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Issue 108 June 2022 21
