An architect and a doctor face infectious diseases. They’re from different continents, but more than just 3,000 miles of ocean separates them. Michael Jansen, CEO and founder of Chicago-based Cityzenith, lives in the present day COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. John Snow lived in London during the cholera epidemic of 1854.
The epidemic in central London confirmed Dr. Snow’s theory that contaminated water carried the bacteria, causing the disease. Using fatality data, victim’s addresses and a detailed map, Dr. Snow narrowed the bacteria’s possible sources to a specific public water pump. His work remains a model of statistical graphing.
Flash forward to 2020. Michael Jansen’s means of presenting data blends the integrity of Dr. Snow’s methodology with leading-edge data science and informatics. Despite living 166 years apart, their methods have advantages in common. They share the primacy of starting with a good idea.
Michael Jansen’s good idea is SmartWorldPro, his firm’s offering for a central, visualized model of building and property data featuring a 3D dashboard.
An architect by training and a serial entrepreneur by choice, Mr. Jansen understood from his early years of practice on megaprojects in Asia the dizzying number of applications in use. Those tools performed discrete tasks, and they didn’t coordinate with one another. He also saw the costly learning curve for staff proficiency and how this specialized training limited who could use the tools.
Consequently, Mr. Jansen created a unifying solution. “SmartWorldPro is like Sim City, except for real cities and real projects,” said Mr. Jansen to the hosts of WGN Radio’s “Technori” program last July. “It helps building owners and architects use data like never before in to predict real-world design and operational outcomes in the digital twin environment.”
A digital twin is a 3D virtual copy of a building, its infrastructure, its surroundings and more. The digital twin technology is fast expanding. It was a $3.8bn industry in 2019 and expected to become $35.8bn by 2025. Cityzenith launched its digital twin software in late 2018. Mr. Jansen says that the platform is “catching the attention of the building industry around the world.”
A pictorial data presentation makes the abstract more concrete, allows the drawing of conclusions. Clear-headed decisions follow. Dr. Snow’s plotting of London’s cholera deaths served the same purpose.
The London outbreak happened with a global cholera pandemic raging in the background, one claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, one million in Russia alone. When Dr. Snow’s investigation in Soho began, the mechanism for the spread of cholera was unknown. He believed impure water was responsible, but he needed proof.
In presenting his evidence, Dr. Snow recognized the ease of leaning the data he’d collected toward his desired theory. Edward Tufte, Ph.D., wrote about the doctor’s statistical graphing, suggesting Dr. Snow’s even-handed approach acknowledged the potential for flaws in analysis and errors in conclusions.
Professor Emeritus Tufte, who taught courses in statistical evidence and information design at Yale University, cited Dr. Snow’s technique for placing the data in context. The map showed not just the suspected pump but all 13 in the neighborhood. With those locations plotted, his arrangement of deaths by address showed the clusters around the Broad Street pump as well as those more distant from it.
The plotting revealed locations where no deaths occurred. However, Dr. Snow noted there was no housing in those locations. The map also showed few deaths at a workhouse just yards from the suspect pump, but the workhouse had a well and no requirement for water from Broad Street. The same for a brewery located one-half block away, that not only had a well for production but, thanks to free beer for its workers, nobody at the brewery drank water. Dr. Snow began with a good idea for source tracing—the water-borne spread of cholera—and supported it with a good method.
So, what are the qualities of a good method in 2020, in the face of the current pandemic? By harnessing which technologies can visually-driven solutions help address the crisis?
Seeing the governor of New York’s televised coronavirus briefings set Michael Jansen’s mind to work. “I was watching Governor Andrew Cuomo present some very difficult news to the public.” Mr. Jansen heard what he considered a frank appraisal of what New York faced. He detected the despairing tone in the governor’s voice.
“Like other business owners and entrepreneurs, I began contemplating the implications and possible solutions,” said Mr. Jansen, who commented by email for this story.
News from Asia about work by software developers offered possibilities. Mr. Jansen lived there for 24 years and was an architect on some of Asia’s earliest megaprojects. He gained insights into the immense efficiency and smart technologies of modern Asian cities.
“To help address the crisis, developers in Asia were hacking together mobile apps and two-dimensional GIS map-based solutions,” said Mr. Jansen. “They were assembling a makeshift digital twin.” He thought, “If there, why not here?”
Mr. Jansen began the theoretical work on how to apply digital twins developed to manage information in smart cities and factories to help manage through a public health crisis.
Mr. Jansen’s firm, Cityzenith, issued a white paper outlining how digital twins provide a solution for mapping, managing and mitigating COVID-19’s impact. The white paper, “Impact of COVID-19 on the Implementation of Digital Twins in the Global Building Industry: Perspectives from Expert Practitioners,” suggests that 3D parametric modeling of an area experiencing an outbreak will map how the virus moves. The digital twin could track virus activity using methods similar to those for following vehicles, packages, or components within a factory.
The display of tracking data on mobile screens places actionable information in the right hands, at the right time. Health officials could gain real-time 3D views of the virus spread, visualizing and geolocating cases with the detail of Dr. Snow’s cholera mapping. In the white paper, Cityzenith wrote that virus cases could be located “whether confined in a studio apartment on a building’s 30th floor or a suburban single-family home.”
Tying together data from all kinds of sources and making it easily interpreted is where the technology of digital twins excels. For containing COVID-19 spread, decision-makers in public health and government have access to data, but piecemealing it together is a slow process. Where digital twins deliver on speed is using artificial intelligence to “reduce run times for large-scale simulations from weeks and months to hours and days,” as the white paper suggests.
Because each building, project, neighborhood, or city is different, Michael Jansen says the data sources will “vary widely” among digital twins. “Included are both public and private data sources that can be managed in private layers, as well as made public when required.” These sources range from GIS data, BIM information and 3D models to sensors monitoring real-time activities such as foot traffic, vehicle movements, weather, and open public networks for Twitter, Facebook and GPS signals.
For Cityzenith’s white paper, available from their website, the firm sought expert opinions about the use of digital twins to address the COVID-19 pandemic. They contacted thought leaders at the front lines of health, government and software development.
Singapore’s response plan on the initial outbreak earned global attention for its speed in flattening the curve, a reference to stemming the virus’s rate of spread. Responding to Singapore’s second outbreak involved new measures, including quarantines of returning students and workers in temporary locations instead of going directly to their homes. These conditions placed digital twins center stage to address populations, not just the physical environments they inhabit.
That’s how Terence Tan sees it. He is the Lead Consultant of the Virtual Singapore Program for GovTech, an agency of the Singapore government. “A nimble and resilient digital twin combining a dynamic view of human, urban, building, and equipment assets can shine to constantly help authorities recalibrate responses, keep people safely apart and flatten the curve.”
India’s experience in the spread of the virus is puzzling health experts. While there’s good news in the low numbers of cases and fatalities for a country of India’s population, those tracking the virus have concerns. Soutik Biswas, a BBC correspondent in India, wrote in a recent article that there’s a need for a “robust public health surveillance system” with the ability to track deaths in hospitals and private homes since most deaths in India occur at home.
The former director of the New Delhi-based National Institute of Urban Affairs understands the role technology could play in India. Jagan Shah said systems and networks for determining the health and productivity of local communities are critical in times of crisis. To meet that requirement, he said, “Digital twins offer the necessary levels of technology-enabled agility and intelligence.”
The global interconnections of digital twins may seem far-fetched, but a member of a leading firm in the UK has made it a career ambition. “Building a digital replica of the world is at the forefront of what we do,” said Neil Thompson, Director of Digital Construction based in London for Atkins, a design, engineering and project management consultancy.
His work toward the goal of connecting digital twins includes leadership roles in two policy-making bodies in the UK. “The COVID-19 pandemic is a clear demonstration of the broader value of connecting data,” said Mr. Thompson. The purpose of digital twins can go beyond support for owners and operators of infrastructure and built assets. “It is now about supporting international governance to be agile and rise to these challenges.”
The challenge includes how and when people return to work against widely ranging predictions on virus spread and fatalities. Peter Scialla, the President and COO of New York City-based Delos, cites the critical requirement to follow “an evidence-based approach” to reopening offices in the COVID-19 era. Delos is a wellness real estate and technology company, delivering the WELL Building StandardTM through a wholly-owned subsidiary.
Speaking for Delos in Cityzenith’s white paper, Mr. Scialla said, “We have always felt that digital twins provide an extraordinary roadmap to advance the efficacy of health interventions in the built environment.” He also spoke about the ongoing convergence of building sciences and health sciences, predicting that “linking wellness principals with design, operational protocols and architecture, especially utilizing digital twins, are more prominent than ever before.”
Providing that link is what Michael Jansen of Cityzenith intends to do, although SmartWorldPro wasn’t developed with a public health crisis in mind.
It was for enabling decision makers to make quicker, smarter decisions using an intelligent dashboard that, frankly, borrows from video gaming and Google Earth-style interfaces. Cityzenith’s first chief software architect was the original creator of Google Earth.
When used in the facilities management role, Cityzenith says the SmartWorldPro application offers “up to a 25% operating cost savings.” One of the firm’s recently won contracts and a large-scale project in the U.S. is with the Orlando Sports & Entertainment District. The three-phase contract calls for completion of a digital twin solution for a mixed-use development billed as a fully-interconnected Smart District.
Modern Asian cities, said Mr. Jansen, have widespread deployments of smart city technologies. “They were better prepared for this crisis,” he added. In the months ahead, cities in the United States and elsewhere can consider how Cityzenith’s solution leads to an intelligent new normal.
As a researcher, writer and commentator, Stephen Witte reports on what’s shaping the future for the A&D community. He’s an advocate for education in design and creative disciplines. His community activities include partnerships with museums for studies of local history, digital exhibits and public programs. Contact him at stephenmwitte@gmail.com.