The 4D Digital Smart City Presentation

Towards a 4D Digital City
David Burden
Daden Limited

© 2013 www.daden.co.uk
Who are Daden?
 Immersive 3D visualisation and training specialists
 Founded 2004, but experience since late 1990s
 Times Higher Education Winner 2009
 US Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge winner 2010
 Nearly 50 projects in immersive environments

The Proposition
 Can we ensure that this happens in a managed
way?
 Can we accelerate the process and reduce the
cost by exploiting synergies?
 How do we manage the ethical considerations?
In the next 10 – 20 years we will see whole city
interactive digital models, with users represented by
avatars, used by a variety of stakeholders, whether
we do anything now or not
The questions are:

Three Built Environment Models
The Architect's Model
- Overall Use
- Aesthetics
The Builder's Model
- Structural Integrity
- Bill of Parts
- E&M Services
- BIM
The User's (Social) Model
- Practical Use by Real Users
Why is this one
always missed out?
Read “Planners
Model” for a whole
city, with GIS not
CAD

Digital Birmingham Workshop
 The move to digital was patchy, but accelerating at the front end
 Whilst a lot of information was digital, it was often in a raster or
unstructured format
 Even when data was digital and to common standards it wasn't
always trusted by the next link in the chain and often re-done
 BIM was very much in its infancy and more a concept than a
standard
 The real end-user (rather than the client) featured little in the process
In 2010 we hosted a workshop for Digital Birmingham of those
involved in the built environment pipeline. The key findings were:

Digital Birmingham Model
One of our first forays into 4D cities was
the model of Birmingham we created for
the City Council in Second Life. This
was based around an interactive
version of Google Maps, which provided
a floor-map you could walk over, and
then a simple 3D build on top to reflect
the major built up areas. Real-time data
could be brought in and plotted, ranging
from social media such as Twitter and
Flickr, to a feed of live bus times onto
individually modelled bus stops.
On a similar system we have even
brought in live aircraft positioning data
from a US Federal Aviation
Administration radar onto a map of
Southern California.

Security & Public
Safety
City Planning,
Operations
and Investors
Visitors
(physical)
Visitors
(virtual)
Residents
Businesses
Audiences for a Digital City Model

Security and Public Safety
 What If's
 Security Planning
 Emergency Planning
 Task Training
 Operations
Management
 Post-Event Reviews
Daden's 3D Security Demonstrator incorporating 3D
model, 2D information overlays, live in-world CCTV
feeds, and GPS tracked operational staff and
assets
Recreation of Op
Shield Emergency
Planning Exercise
deployment
reproduced in 3
hours after the
exercise

City Planning, Ops & Investment
 What Ifs
 Planning
 Impact Assessment
 Marketing
 Consultation
 Ops & Incident
Management
 Training
Daden's immersive model of the new Library of
Birmingham, used by Council staff since 2010 to plan
for the buildings opening in 2013

Visitors, Residents & Businesses
 Wayfinding
 Marketing
 Virtual Events/
Conferences
 Learning
 Socialising
 Commerce
Daden's immersive model of Millennium Point, used both as
a learning venue by Birmingham City University and a
virtual venue to support the British Science Fair, and used
by overseas academic visitors to familiarise themselves
before physical visits

Library of Birmingham
The Library of Birmingham is an example
of the third, social model of a building. Built
to be used by the librarians and library
users themselves, the model has been
used since late 2010 to plan for the
opening of the building in 2013. We trained
the library staff in how to place furniture
and shelving from a central warehouse,
and even how to create their own objects.
The Library also includes a virtual post-it
note system to gather comments from
users during consultation sessions, as well
as voting booths and spaces with variable
configuration.
As the building of the physical library has
progressed staff have even found that
contractors bidding for and working on the
main project are using the virtual build to
get a better idea of how the Library will look
and work, and where their parts of the
structure and infrastructure will fit.
And as the opening date in 2013 grows closer, the
staff are using the model to support the “soft
landing”, ensuring that when the physical doors
open the public will have already familiarised
themselves with the layout and operation of the
new Library.

Technology for a Digital City Model
So what technologies are there than can help
in the building of a digital city?

Architectural Visualisation
 Moving into 3D
 3D focus traditionally on
high-spec, non-real-
time flythrough videos
 Growing use of more
interactive tools like
SketchUp

CAD/Building Modelling
 Moving into 3D
 AutoCAD → Revit
 Impact of Building
Information Model
(BIM) encouraging
common standards and
digital data sharing
 CityGML Standard – but
uptake?

GIS
 Moving into 3D
 Respository of vs
viewer of data
 Emerging Open
Standards, eg OpenGIS
 Terrain and building
data
 Georeferenced
accuracy
 Growth of WebGIS and
links to Google
Earth/Maps etc

Mirror Worlds
 Objective view of large
geographic areas, in
2D and 3D
 Can have real-time
data feeds
 Single user, no avatar
 Good for wide-spread
distribution and free-
form use
 Mainly externals
 Google
Maps/Earth/Streetview
Berlin in 3D in Google Earth

Virtual Worlds/Game Engines
 Immersive 3D
experience
 Interiors and exteriors
 Multi-user, avatar
based
 Can have real-time
data feeds
 Good for whole-task
training, esp
spatial/collaborative
 Good for subjective
experience
Berlin whole-city model in 3D in Twinity (now
closed)

Model Capture
 Increasing number of
technologies for
automated capture of
city models
 Streetview of linear
streets (but 2D)
 Aerial/Satellite
photogrammetry for
whole city 3D model
(but typically break
down at street level)
 Primarily exteriors and
miss covered walkways

Resilience Training in NYC
Our project for New York City's Office of
Emergency Management shows how 3D models
of real spaces can be used to support city
emergency and resilience training.
With New York now in the hurricane zone, the
city needed to train its emergency managers on
how to open, operate and close a hurricane
shelter, and how to deal with all the problems
that the shelterees would have.
Whilst they had tried traditional eLearning
approaches, they lacked the visceral sense of
what operating in a shelter would feel like. A
virtual model allowed them to better appreciate
some of the spatial decisions they needed to
make, and gave them a more visceral sense of a
disaster environment.
In 2012, two years after we delivered the
simulation New York was struck by Superstorm
Sandy, and many of those trained using the
simulator were involved in doing the tasks for real.
After the Superstorm NYC used the simulation
again to help drive out the lesons learned,
hopefully for inclusion in a next generation trainer.

Real
World
LiveReal
World
Exercises
Virtual
Worlds
Mirror Worlds
GIS/CAD/BIM
Taken together
these could provide
a range of
increasingly real
environments in
which to design
environments, plan
operations and
buildings, train staff,
manage operations,
encourage and
orientate visitors,
market the city, and
improve citizen
involvement
Working Together

Physical
World
Live
Physical
World
Exercises
Virtual
Worlds
Mirror Worlds
GIS/CAD/BIM
Policing, Security,
Emergency Services &
Public Safety
Utilities &
Transport
Visitors
(physical)
Visitors
(virtual)
Residents
& Businesses
Planners,
City
Managers
&
Investors
What Ifs
Ops & Incident
Management
Training
Wayfinding
Socialising
Commerce
Learning
Marketing
Virtual Events/
Conferences
Wayfinding
Marketing
What Ifs
Planning
Impact
Assessment
Marketing
Consultation
Task Training
Planning
Ops Management
Reviews
A Strategy for the 4D Digital City

The Vision
 Our vision is for every major city to have a “live”, up to date 4D digital model available
to all the stake-holders who wish to use it.
 Different stakeholder groups have “private” copies of the city model for their own uses,
and which they can augment with their own data.
 A “subjective” model, not an “objective” one. An immersive and mutli-user experience,
allowing users to walk the virtual streets, understanding how the city looks and works
from any point on its streets, or from, or even in, any of its buildings.
 A city to be used, not looked at.
 A training and planning environment – from the routine of city planning to the rehearsal
of emergency exercises
 A vast and powerful sandbox in which to play “what-ifs” with the city.
 A city management enviornment – live feeds from CCTV and GPS, traffic and transport
information systems, allowing (selected) users to view the city almost as it is in real-
time.
 A city “populated”, using “pattern of life” software to drive animations of the typical city
population: workers, pedestrians, visitors and traffic, this is more than just the buildings.

What This is Not
 A single user, non-avatar based visualisation- we need to avatars
and multi-user modes to gain the real benefits for most stake-
holders
 Marketing driven – it's a nice-to-have but can't justify the
investment (cf many “marketing/retail” model cities)
 Consumer driven – Twinity has tried and failed

The Do Nothing Approach
 There is growing interest in large development and city models
from a variety of stakeholders, these WILL lead to part-city and
whole city models being built
 Many other stake-holders cannot justify the cost of a model for
themselves, but could justify shared access to a common (but
cloned/sharded) model
 Doing nothing is likely to result in:
 High costs to UKplc due to duplication
 Lack of standards and common references (crucial for
cross-stakeholder co-operation)
 Longer time-frames, reducing net benefit and increasing
risk of mistakes
 Poor management of moral and ethical issues

Datascape
Datascape is our immersive 3D data
visualisation application built on the same
Unity3D platform as our training
simulations.
Using a 2D map or a 3D city mesh model
as a basis you can bring in a variety of
data feeds and plot them over the city,
from GPS tracks of bus locations,
throuhg static assets like cell towers to
dynamic social media data
The vertical axis can be used to display
time – so you can see the rhythms of life
of the city, or any other parameter of
interest
As well as standard solid shapes you can
also bring in 3D icons for people, vehicle
types, activities etc

The Prize
 A co-ordinated (but not necessarily centralised) programme to
develop multi-use, multi-user immersive 3D city models, mixed
with historical and real-time data, to serve a wide variety of
stakeholders, and possibly evolving into a whole-country model
 Think G-Cloud for 3D modelling and city data
 The benefits would be:
 Better public safety
 Better environments in which to live and work
 Better day-to-day city management
 Better training
 Increased inward investment
 Reduced costs and time-scale, common standards,
shared visualisation
 Better management of moral and ethical issues

Smart City vs Virtual City
 Smart Cities are all about enabling, through technological and
non-technological means, a city to make best use of its
resources to deliver wealth, sustainability, cultural richness and a
good standard of health and living to its citizens and other stake-
holders.
 A virtual city model, fully populated with city data, and exposed to
all stake-holders is not only an esential tool in the creation and
management of a smart city, but possibly a pre-requisite for its
successful long term development.

VANZI
VANZI is the proposed new (2013) “federated,
fully integrated, 'photo-realistic' secure 3D Data
Set, that enables users to model the Natural
and Built Environment across Australia and
New Zealand - using any software and portal of
their choice.
'Federated' simply means VANZ is made up of
separate data sets each under the control of
different owners and government organisations.
Under the proposal, VANZ would become the
single 'Authorised Data Set' for all property-
related activities - enabling the real world to be
represented, and scenarios, plans and designs
modelled through any 3D software across time,
to show: historical, current and planned future
states.
The '10 Foundation Data Sets' nominated by
the Australian and New Zealand Land
Information Council are critical to the
development of VANZ, and represent a key first
step in its creation.

In time, VANZ may prove to be the most important
piece of 'infrastructure' created in the 21st Century -
through which all other infrastructure and
development takes place.”
http://www.vanzi.com.au/

The Challenges
 Choosing Standards and Technologies
 Capturing Data
 Aerial vs Ground
 Textures
 Interiors
 Legal/IP/Licensing issues (which sunk Twinity)
 The role of Ordnance Survey?
 Keeping it up to date
 Managing Ethical and Moral issues (big-brother/panopticon)

A Possible Solution
 Make this Planning Law based
 Develop in Mirror World and Virtual World simultaneously – over
time the technologies may converge
 Use aerial techniques to create a low-rez,exteriors only model of
the city
 Use ground-based techniques to detail key parts of the city,
drawing on existing models/resources where possible
 Change Planning Law/Regulations so that every new build/major
change MUST be submitted as a 3D model to the set standard,
and all Planning Decisions must be supported by seeing the
model in-situ in the city model – EMBED THE MODEL IN THE
SYSTEM

Possible Next Steps
 A survey of interest and opinions
 An audit of current activity in this area
 A Conference/Workshop along VANZI lines
A sharing of existing resources
 A pilot/demonstrator
Who's up for it?

White Paper
The full white-paper is
available for download:
http://www.daden.co.uk/
daden-releases-white-
paper-the-4d-digital-
city-a-discussion/

Web: www.daden.co.uk
Email: info@daden.co.uk
YouTube: www.youtube.com/dadenmedia
Twitter: @dadenlimited

The 4D Digital Smart City Presentation

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