Three Ways the Digital Twin is Changing our Approach to Community Planning

Using Technology to Deliver Efficiency and Cost Savings

While the principles that guide effective community planning are undisputed, recent developments in technology are putting a new spin on the tried-and-true approaches of the past. Over the past four years, fueled by the pandemic, the development of new cutting-edge technology, particularly the digital twin, has had a major impact on our approach to community planning.

1. Improved Collaboration in Committee Meetings

All our projects have committee meetings, which are typically composed of municipal staff along with volunteers or other stakeholders. Whether the meeting is in person or virtual, when we start discussing potential projects, we will bring up the digital twin on the screen. We can move around a site or walk through a corridor together and discuss potential improvements.

The digital twin enables better awareness of site conditions during the meeting. For example, the flow isn’t interrupted by having to wonder whether a street does or does not have a crosswalk. We can look together and see that maybe there is a crosswalk, but the paint has faded away.

Enabling committee members to see their community this way has led to increased collaboration, more informed and productive committee meetings, and more reality-based planning.

2. Efficiency and Cost Savings for Local Communities

Local communities we work with often face budget constraints. By incorporating a digital twin into the planning process, we’ve been able to provide efficiency and cost savings to our clients.

MJ has led the NY Forward and Downtown Revitalization Initiatives (DRI) for several communities in New York’s North Country. For these projects, we used mobile mapping technology to capture data on the entire town or village. We incorporated that data into a digital twin, which was used throughout the planning process.

The digital twin gives the entire team the ability to virtually navigate the project site, resulting in less time dedicated to travel, cost savings, and quicker turnaround of deliverables. It’s been extremely beneficial to have the ability to quickly recall what we’ve seen on the site once we are back in the office.

Some of the communities we’ve worked with through the NY Forward program are several hours away. Driving through the Adirondacks to reach some of these communities, particularly in winter, can be challenging. Using the digital twin, we’ve been able to work with these communities on these important initiatives, year-round without disruption to the project schedule.

3. Opening the Door to Untapped Talent

The power of digital twin technology has changed the way we work with our team members. Our subconsultants are no longer limited by geography, opening the door to a pool of consultants that may not have been feasible while adhering to a set budget and schedule. We give all our team members access to the digital twin from the start of each project.

Recently, one of our team members, Andropogon, a minority-owned landscape architecture firm out of Philadelphia, was assisting with design concepts for the villages of Cape Vincent and Waddington for the NY Forward program. Andropogon was able to explore the project sites and develop beautiful designs using the digital twin. This provided considerable time savings for what otherwise would have meant an entire day out of the office driving from the city of Philadelphia to New York’s North Country.

Digital twin technology is here to stay. At this point, I use MJ’s in-house digital twin viewer, MJ4D, on the majority of my projects. It is included as part of our existing conditions scope from the start of each project. We have just scratched the surface in terms of digital twin technology, and I’m excited about what this means for the future of community planning.