The Leading News & Information Service For The Facilities, Workplace & Built Environment Community

Microsoft and Bentley to Develop Digital Twins for City Planning

Microsoft and Bentley to Develop Digital Twins for City Planning
05 November 2020
 

Bentley Systems and Microsoft are to collaborate to accelerate smart city urban planning and smart construction.

This alliance will combine Microsoft’s Azure IoT Digital Twins and Azure Maps with Bentley Systems’ iTwins platform, enabling engineers, architects, constructors and city planners to work within a comprehensive city-scale digital twin.

Bentley Systems is a leader in engineering software for professionals to design, build, operate and maintain critical infrastructure such as road and rail networks, and public works and utilities, will collaborate to develop new smart city solutions. 

Along with Microsoft, Bentley Systems will explore opportunities for digital twins in urban planning and citizen engagement for cities around the world. This includes city planning projects in Dublin and the renovation of FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium. 

Greg Bentley, CEO, Bentley Systems commented: “At Bentley we believe that infrastructure digital twins can empower engineers, constructors and owner-operators to design, build and operate infrastructure assets that are more cost-effective, more resilient and more sustainable. 

“With Azure as the foundation of our cloud services, our offerings are more broadly scaled and differentiated by the further integrations of Microsoft technologies. We are excited to extend our partnership to bring new digital twin advances to infrastructure engineering organizations and their constituents.” 

 

City Planning and Managing Complex Projects 

 

The capital city of Dublin, Ireland, with a population of more than 1.2 million, is working with Bentley Systems to develop a large-scale digital twin as part of the city’s planning efforts. 

“To overcome the challenges of getting public review and comment for new development projects in Dublin during the pandemic, we turned to Microsoft and Bentley to create an interactive virtual environment to ensure our citizens could provide their input from the safety of their homes and keep the development projects on track,” said Jamie Cudden, Smart City Program Manager at Dublin City Council.

“The impact of the pandemic has forced cities like Dublin to accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Working with Microsoft and Bentley we are reimagining how interactive virtual environments and digital twins can support citizens to engage from the safety of their own home on new development projects in their local communities. Working with these technology partners, we are building an adaptable and scalable solution based on Microsoft Teams and Bentley’s OpenCities Planner that will set the standard for the future of planning and public engagement in cities.”   

In addition to sustaining infrastructure development in smart cities, project digital twins are facilitating industrial construction. Bentley Systems was recognized by Microsoft as the 2020 MSUS Partner Award winner for the Industry-Automotive category, in which an automotive factory uses the HoloLens 2 with Bentley’s SYNCHRO 4D construction-modelling software.  

Picture: a photograph showing a urban planning model of a city

Article written by Ella Tansley | Published 05 November 2020

Share



Related Articles

Digital Twin Technology and FM

Digital twins have been described as being able to provide “previously unthinkable” levels of operational control, asset performance management and...

 Read Full Article
How Technology and Smart Buildings Will Support the Daunting Retrofit Challenge

How will the intersection of retrofits, smart homes and digitally transformed building maintenance help the UK to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050? Nik Flytzanis,...

 Read Full Article
Disruptive Technologies Named Property Tech Company Of The Year

Disruptive Technologies, the creator of the world’s smallest wireless sensors, has been named the Property Tech Company of the Year at the Global Business Tech...

 Read Full Article
What Facilities Management Can Learn From Changing Consumers And Their Digital Demands 

Aleš Špetič, Co-Founder and CEO at Klevio, shares his knowledge of “FM’s digital transformation” and how Proptech will continue to...

 Read Full Article
IWFM And Microsoft Partner In Smart Buildings Research

The IWFM has begun a research and development collaboration with Microsoft to explore a shared vision for the role of technology in high performing workplaces. A new...

 Read Full Article
7 Steps for Creating a Smart Building

FM provider Service Works Global has released a new white paper that details the seven steps for creating a smart building.   The paper dispels the assumption...

 Read Full Article
How to Identify and Address IoT Security Weaknesses

Data-driven facilities management is now the expected norm, but security concerns about IoT systems still remain amongst FMs and tenants. The Internet of Things (IoT)...

 Read Full Article
Smart Buildings at Increased Risk of Cyber Attacks, Says Verdantix

The operational technology that powers connected devices across building systems is providing more entry points for cyber criminals to exploit, says research and advisory...

 Read Full Article
Chicago's Smartest Building

800 Fulton Market, a gateway to one of Chicago’s fastest-growing neighbourhoods, has been completed.   Watch the...

 Read Full Article
What is Industry 5.0 and What Does it Mean for FM?

Felipe Ávila da Costa from Infraspeak shares his insights on how Industry 5.0 is shaping the way we create safe and comfortable environments for...

 Read Full Article