Industry experts: Digital twins will have major impact on industrial building usage post-lockdown

According to a new white paper from Cityzenith, digital twins developed to aggregate, manage, analyze, visualize, and predict information for today’s smart cities, manufacturing plants, and building construction sites can be successfully repurposed to provide a unique information management solution to the current Covid-19 crisis, now and later.

The report’s authors suggest one of the most profound impacts of Covid-19 will be how professionals manage and track the virus to return safely into urban environments and workplaces. Building owners—including landlords, property asset management companies, local, federal, and national governments—need to fully understand these impacts and related data points, the authors argue.

In the white paper, some of the world’s leading experts give their perspective on how this will be managed through digital twin technology and the internet of things (IoT).

Key components from the whitepaper:
● How people won’t use buildings in the same way ever again
● Why Digital Twins provide a uniquely powerful solution for mapping and mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
● A brave new world where the internet of things creates a Digital Twin of every building in the world. This will create better outcomes for health and environments with urban living.

What is a digital twin?
● Digital Twins are virtual replicas of physical building assets using IOT.
● Digital Twins connect to the data in and around the building’s physical assets.
● Digital Twins deliver unique value at different phases of a building’s lifecycle from design to demolition.
● Digital Twins can track all data including health, energy resources, workflows and so much more.

Expert Contributors:
Neil Thompson: Director, Digital Construction at Atkins, Vice-Chair of the TechUK’s Digital Twin Working Group and Delivery Lead for the National Digital Twin Programme; London, UK
Terence Tan: Technical Lead, Virtual Singapore (Digital Twin) Program, GovTech; Singapore
Gregory Curtin: Ph.D., Founder & CEO, CivicConnect; Advisory Council, World Economic Forum (WEF) Future of Urban Development and Services; Global Advisory Council, The World Nano Foundation; Los Angeles, California, USA
Michael Jansen: CEO & Founder, Cityzenith SmartWorldPro Digital Twin Technology; Chicago, Illinois, USA
Tom Shircliff: Co-founder and Principal, Intelligent Buildings; Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
Peter Scialla: President and COO, Delos; Co-Chair of the Well Living Lab, a Delos and Mayo Clinic collaboration; New York, USA
Dr. Jonathan Reichental: CEO, Professor, Author of ‘Smart Cities for Dummies’; former Chief Information Officer, the City of Palo Alto, California, USA
Joe Dignan: Founder, Kintechi (former Industry Managing Director, Worldwide Public Sector, Microsoft and Global Partner Lead, Future Cities Catapult); London, UK
Jagan Shah: Former Director, National Institute of Urban Affairs; New Delhi, India
Paul Stannard: Chairman, World Digital Foundation, Smart City Global Holdings, World Science Aid, Pandemic Protection Fund and The World Nano Foundation; London, UK