The world after: Towards sustainable and resilient urban future

Dassault Systèmes organized a webinar titled World after: Sustainable and resilient urban future.

Sylvain Laurent, EVP, Chairman 3DS Infrastructure & Cities Board, Dassault Systemes, said that there are many challenges in the Indian construction industry. These are skilled labour shortages, safety risks, environmental sustainability, poor project performance, cost of materials, and limited technology adoption.

Virtual twin experience addresses challenges. There can be building life cycle management, IoT and data intelligence, 5D planning and simulation, and lean construction execution. A platform can be created to connect all of the dots. In the city domain, unfortunately, we think in silos. City stakeholders can share all data to share the digital twin. It will enable the development of effective public policies. There can be sustainable and resilient cities for effective governance and quality.

The platform is engineered to work online and offline. An example can be the virtual twin experience of the infrastructure projects. There can be lower costs, faster development, optimized time to complete, increased safety and reduced footprint. There can be remote collaboration using on-cloud BIM and virtual construction.

There is also the health, safety and environment analysis for community welfare. There is the virtual twin experience for safety. Eg., there can be HVAC reductions, and simulation of airflows. Technological prowess can be demonstrated in the virtual twin hospital, as shown by Aden, a partner. There can be project collaboration, concept, space planning and modular design, engineering and simulation. These can build on manufacturing, transportation and logistics, installation and training, and facility operation and maintenance.

Dassault Systèmes recently collaborated with the Aden Group to develop a ready-to-use, turnkey hospital solution, the Akila Care. Quickly deployable and easily maintained, this hospital is meant for Covid-19 patients.

Dr. K Rajeshwara Rao, Additional Secretary, NITI Aayog, added that a special economic package was announced by the PM. Urban development is a key business under the Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan. The outbreak of Covid-19 has been teaching many lessons. There has been emergence of new technologies in the last six months. These can improve the urban quality of life. There can be integrated control and command centers. They can track and control movement, automated building permission, etc. These are improving the quality of urban life. Local governments have given due importance to urban development.

Digital transformation partner

In his speech, Jayant Damodar Patil, Whole time Director and Senior Executive, VP (Defence and Smart Technologies), Larsen & Toubro, said that the smart world is the digital transformation partner to the nation. Smart world solutions touch the citizens in every corner of the country, improving the quality of life, ensuring the safety, and fostering digital inclusions.

In Hyderabad, there is vehicle tracking taking place. At Prayagraj or Allahabad, Kumbh Mela, there was crowd monitoring done. There are deep learning based-algorithms that detect crowd formation. About 23,000 crowd agglomerations were reported in Mumbai. There is the physical distance monitoring as well. L&T is monitoring physical distancing norms in a metropolis with 10 million citizens. There is also a need for digital solutions for contact tracing and control of citizens. There are 24x7 command and control centers for Covid-19.

There are futuristic solutions for the post-Covid-19 era, There can be mobile digital case / FIR filing with real-time sharing, mobile ID verification and multi-system search, etc. Contactless healthcare services have also come up. There can be transfer of medical images like x-rays and AI-based diagnostics. Drones and robots can deliver essential goods and medicines in the containment areas. There can be vaccine distribution management and post-pandemic urban planning. We will see urban planning insights on hospitals, retail and ration stores via licenses and permits planning.

The public distribution efficiency monitoring is also taking place. There will be blockchain-based citizen tracking for misuse and hoarding prevention. The citizen risk monitoring and access control will have app color codes for citizen risk factor such as red, yellow, or green. We will see a world evolving that will be much more smarter and digital place in future.