Digital Twins – Unlocking The Value Of Interconnected Infrastructure Data

“We are delighted to release a new report today, in collaboration with the University of Canterbury Quake Centre and their Building Innovation Partnership, on the value and need for a Digital Twin for New Zealand’s infrastructure,” says Infrastructure New Zealand CEO Paul Blair.

“A Digital Twin is a data-based replica of the built environment. It brings together the many disparate datasets on buildings, water, transport, energy and other infrastructure and uses that data to build a digital model of the real world that can experimented with to inform decision making.

“By mirroring our physical environment digitally, we can easily discover potential challenges and shared solutions between infrastructure that too often is disconnected from each other.

“Digital twins allow you to easily share data in a standardised form, collaborate on solutions, and better plan maintenance and new construction.

“Our country has over $300 billion in infrastructure assets and will spend another $100-150 billion over the next 10 years in maintaining and improving our infrastructure.

“A Digital Twin would be an easy win to streamline and combine works, reduce uncertainty, and facilitate long-term strategic planning.

“It could be particularly valuable in optimising the delivery of programmes emerging from the Infrastructure Reference Group prioritisation process.

“This report encourages the Government and Industry to collaborate on a Digital Twin for New Zealand. We believe it could have a transformational impact on the way our industry and country works,” says Blair.

“Leveraging our infrastructure data is possibly one of the most effective investments that we can make at this time. We have smart people, the technology needed, and a vision for the future. Let’s take this opportunity to be clever with our data to build, run and maintain our infrastructure in ways that deliver the services needed for New Zealanders to flourish,” says Greg Preston, Quake Centre Manager.

We thank the Quake Centre and our many members who collaborated with us to develop this report and advance this thinking. Please read the report by following this link.

To learn more about Digital Twins, and to hear from the some of the experts leading this work, please watch our webinar on the topic, tomorrow morning at 10:30am. You can register for the session by following this link.

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