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New York, New York: so good, they twinned it once

A view of Hexagon’s high-definition mesh model of New York (image: Hexagon).

Leica owner Hexagon is offering digital twins of entire cities as off-the-shelf products.

According to Global Construction Review, the models comprise high-definition true orthophotos, obliques, digital terrain models, LiDAR point clouds, 3D building models and land use maps.

The programme uses a hybrid urban mapping sensor, the Leica CityMapper-2, that concurrently collects LiDAR and aerial imagery.

So far this year, the company has captured New York (pictured above), Dallas, Tokyo, Munich, Cologne, Vienna, Milan, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Stuttgart and Frankfurt, with more expected in early 2022.

Hexagon said its content makes it “the ideal data source for artificial intelligence, machine learning, automatic feature extraction and large-volume analytics”.

It said digital twins of cities would help city administrations monitor critical assets, assess and model risks, and support the visualisation of new infrastructure projects for public communication.

“By creating a 3D digital twin of the world, the HxGN Content Program is supporting the global need for geospatial data that enables insightful, data-driven decisions,” said John Welter, president of geospatial content solutions.

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Comments

  1. Is this a digital twin? Is it even BIM? Or is it a 3D contextual model for visualisation? I can’t see from this article where the digital twin aspect comes in.

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