City ‘Digital Twins’ have been talked about a lot recently. It is part of the way in which we will manage and model our urban environments in the future. Real digital twins are meant to be replicas of a real world object or place in the ‘digital’ space which has a live and real-time link with the actual object or place. This can be used to model particular scenarios and hopefully predict and manage future events.

In the engineering industry this means you can model fluid valves under particular types of heat and or pressure. The digital model replicates the physical properties of an object to allow for scenario modelling. This in turn allows designers the opportunity to model ‘what if’ scenarios and change parameters and materials to improve their product.

In city and urban terms ‘digital twins’ can mean many things to many people and it often depends on the professional background you come from as to what that is.

3D models are one aspect of a ‘digital twin’ but it has to be combined with other data and attributes to be really useful.

We have been working with ImaginationLancaster at Lancaster University and the Lancaster City Council to create the first building block of a digital twin for Lancaster District. The first building block is information: 3D, geospatial, and other attributes combined. The Lancaster City Information Model (LCIM) is where we have started.

As a result of our LCIM project we have learnt a lot. We can share this knowledge about how we have implemented LCIM with other urban areas! Contact us to find out more.

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