Cities are increasingly discovering the benefits of digital twins for both planning and operational management, according to the report ‘Digital Twins and Urban Infrastructure Planning” by the global tech market advisory firm ABI Research. It estimates that cities could achieve cost savings of 280 billion US dollars by 2030 by using digital twins for more efficient urban planning.
According to Dominique Bonte, Vice President End Markets at ABI Research, cost savings can be obtained in areas such as energy, utilities, transportation and infrastructure. However, digital twins offer many other advantages “in terms of supporting and improving sustainability, circularity, decarbonization, and the overall quality of urban living”.
The report explains that digital twins can help get designs right the first time, thus avoiding expensive modifications after completion. They also help maximise solar capacity, improve safety to reduce emergency response costs, and optimise the designs of utilities, streetlights and surveillance networks. Leading suppliers offering urban digital twin planning solutions include Siemens, ANSYS and Microsoft.
“The increasingly complex nature of connected and smart urban infrastructure, especially in view of future smart urban concepts, will simply mandate the deployment of digital twins as critical, holistic management tools, similar to the role they play in other industries like manufacturing,” concludes Bonte.
