CU1911

SOFTWARE focus
What makes a city smart?
Bentley Systems introduces OpenCities Planner to promote the development of Smart Cities
Increasing urbanisation, environmental
concerns and the evolution of
infrastructure to accommodate new
transport technologies are forcing
governments and local authorities to
upgrade their planning needs and
ambitions. Simply put, they need to
squeeze more people into finite space,
improve or retain their access to services
and transport facilities, and save money in
the process.
Hence the evolution of Smart Cities - the
utilisation of Digital Twinning to create
digital representations of reality in order to
plan their development and integrate all
sources of information, including terrain
mapping and other GIS data, building and
infrastructure models, utilities and services
and operating statistics. The federated
data, presented within a single model, uses
all of the latest tricks of the trade to share
the resources available to planners, city
clients, contractors and, most importantly
to the people involved, the inhabitants.
Because Bentley Systems already
operates within ecosystems that provide
the tools to develop different aspects of
infrastructure development - OpenRoads,
OpenRail, Conceptstation - and supports
these with reality modelling tools like
Contextcapture, another vital part of
infrastructure development that allows
models of existing structures to be
modelled to facilitate further development,
It has been able to utilise their capabilities
to present OpenCities Planner.
It comes at just the right time too, as IDC
has forecast significant growth in Smart
City planning, rising worldwide from $80
billion currently to $135 billion in 2021,
outlining the demand for higher
productivity, efficiency and cost reduction
and to assign more planning resources.
HAKAN ENGMAN AND AGENCY 9
Bentley Systems has facilitated the
development of Smart City planning by
appointing Hakan Engman as Business
Development Director for Smart Cities.
Hakan was CEO of the Swedish company
Agency 9, which was recently acquired by
Bentley. The company's web-based 3D
tools provided huge, integrated maps and
3D models for project communication and
citizen dialogue - now an integral part of
OpenCities Planner.
Recently, assisted by Johan Goransson,
Director of Product Management, Hakan
presented OpenCities Planner at Bentley
conferences and symposiums in London,
to explain the concept behind the new
initiative. The basis of their presentation
was to show how OpenCity Planner met
the goals of planning authorities by
providing more apartments, improved
transportation and infrastructure, energy
savings, better services for inhabitants, and
a happier populace. They referenced a
United Nations statement which said that
'Smart infrastructure provides the
foundation for all of the key themes related
to a Smart City'.
PLANNING A SMART CITY
An intelligent infrastructure is therefore
crucial, and Bentley see it developing in
four stages: from mere bricks and steel to
an automated structure, the addition of
intelligence, and a final state where a fully
integrated, intelligent entity is achieved.
Smart Cities have to incorporate a
strategy that allows elements to be built up
in stages, starting as a map that includes
roads, rail and buildings, street furniture
and infrastructural elements, power, water
and transportation, and to update these in
real time as the city evolves.
A Digital Twin of the city is used as the
background to visualise its operational
status, but also to be used for analysis and
simulation purposes and to provide the
information from a multiplicity of sources to
create unified workflows. Bentley already
operates ecosystems to plan, design, build
and operate infrastructure, and that is now
enhanced with analytical design,
geoinformation management and the
management of assets.
OPENCITIES PLANNER
Going digital can only be achieved in a
connected data environment, which allows
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November/December 2019