Koeppel, who leads Esri’s international business development for European transportation markets, cited an innovative use of GIS in Munich. “Using sensor data, the municipality created a deep learning model to predict pavement deterioration,” he explained. “That allows them to take a proactive and ultimately cost-reductive approach to maintenance.”
Authorities in the Netherlands, too, are harnessing Esri technologies to streamline operations. The Port of Rotterdam mounted a mission in recent years to become the world’s smartest seaport, driven by energy transition goals and the steady autonomization of the shipping industry.
“We also wanted to move away from a set of disjointed information systems that siloed our assets,” shared Erwin Rademaker, the port’s executive program manager, in a keynote address. “By implementing GIS technologies, we’ve centralized our data in a single system that employees use to gain understanding of port conditions in real time.”
A key component of that solution has been a so-called digital twin, a virtual representation of the port that supplies a plethora of relevant data. By clicking on a specific port location, employees can see information about maintenance operations, weather conditions, planned ship movements, and more. This aggregation of disparate data points in one system simplifies operations such as route planning and environmental management.
The triumph of Rotterdam’s digital twin solution may prove a bellwether for widespread adoption of that technology. In a second panel discussion, Chris Andrews, Mansour Raad, Dr. Debra Laefer, and Dr. Gerhard Schrotter explored the role digital twins are beginning to play in urban operations.
Laefer, a civil and urban engineering professor at New York University, explained how digital twins can improve conditions in cities. “By building digital models of neighborhoods based on data collected by drones and sensors, we can perform multi-criterion simulations to understand the contextual conditions affecting our cities and explore solutions to urban challenges,” she said.
An example of this was provided by Schrotter, who is Zurich’s director of geomatics and surveying. “To combat urban heat islands, we can use digital twins to understand how different elements—wind patterns, vegetation, the geometry of buildings—factor into the equation.”
Raad, Esri’s global chief technologist, credited the development of digital twins to several technological advancements, including the ubiquity of data-gathering sensors and the processing power of artificial intelligence. And Andrews, an Esri product manager, noted how applications of digital twin technology can be used to uplift cities broadly: “Simulations can be used to tackle climate issues and improve social and economic inclusivity,” he said.
Wrapping up the event, Esri’s director of professional services Brian Cross compared geospatial technologies to the human nervous system. “Just as our bodies intake information from our surroundings, then act on that intelligence,” he said, “our cities can collect geospatial data for higher level decision-making based on a holistic understanding of the contextual factors and patterns involved.”
