Shaping the Future City: Five Applications Empowering Digital Transformation

JOYCE DELATORRE: Hi, everyone. My name is Joyce Delatorre. And together with Fernanda Machado and Pedro Soethe, all of us from the Autodesk technical team, welcome you in our session. Today, we are going to navigate into five applications that empower digital transformation and shape the future city.

This is just the safe harbor statement. Digital transformation has ceased to be just a trend. Currently, it is an undeniable reality that is transforming our lives. But have you think about how we can use digital transformation to help shape the city of the future? The answer lies in the synergy between technology and vision.

As we progress in the digital age, the possibilities to rethink and reimagining our cities our boundless. Technology enables us to tackle complex challenges and create innovative solutions that make our cities more livable, sustainable, and efficient.

As we explore the opportunities offered by digital transformation to shape the future of cities, it is crucial to recognize and address the challenges our cities face today. Demand growth, by 2030, it is estimated that approximately five billion people will inhabit cities worldwide. And by 2050, it is projected that 7 out of 10 people will live in urban areas.

Our cities are grappling with aging infrastructure that requires updating and maintenance. The challenge is to ensure that our buildings, transportation systems, and public utility networks are reliable, safe, and efficient.

Digital transformation, while promising, digital transformation also presents challenges, such as the need to ensure cyber security and digital inclusion for all citizens. These challenges are not just obstacles but also opportunities for our citizens.

As we continue in our journey to understand the whole of digital transformation, we must also recognize the crucial role that government support and initiatives play in this transformation. Governments around the world are taking proactive steps to combat climate change. They are promoting net-zero emission plans to decarbonize the transport sector. Does not only address environmental concerns but also contributes to cleaner and more sustainable urban living.

In a world increasingly vulnerable to natural disasters, it's heartening to note that 102 countries have reported having local governments with disaster risk reduction strategies. These strategies aim to boost the resiliency of cities and protect the resilience in the face of unforeseen challenges.

As we continue our exploration of the urban transformation, let's now turn our attention to some opportunities that can help us build more resilient, sustainable, and inclusive cities. Sustainable Development Goals 11 underscores the importance of urban development efforts with a specific focus on expanding public transport and improving waste management.

The rising prevalence of slums in many urban areas is a stark reminder of an urgent housing crisis. While this challenge poses difficulties, it's also offer an opportunity for us to reimagine urban housing solutions.

Now, let's shift our focus to five practical examples that demonstrate the power of digital transformation in action. These real-world applications serve as illustrations of how technology can reshape our cities for the better.

FERNANDA MACHADO: Thanks, Joyce. Well, the world is increasingly aware of the risks and devastation caused by the rising and severe number of floods events. Building resilience is one of the leading technical logical trends in future cities. Well, how?

In a brief search for flood events on platforms like flood lists, we have noticed that it is a critical challenge worldwide. In countries and municipalities in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania the fact is that flood is one of the most prevalent natural disasters.

These disasters bring with them significant socioeconomic and environmental losses. According to Willis Towers Watson, 1.8 billion people, more than 20% of the world's population, live in areas that are directly exposed to 100-year flooding. 89% are in low and middle income nations. And finally, 12 of 26 states of Brazil saw multiple major flood events between January and June of this year, 2023. Then what is the new possible to mitigate flood risk?

PEDRO SOETHE: Great, thanks, Fernanda. We will be studying a complex region here in Sao Paulo, which is the community called Paraisopolis. We have a region with a steep terrain and a presence of several streams. Neighbors of Paraisopolis respected the contour lines and have the luxury homes. But an allotment after 1921, regular blocks with orthogonal streets with completely against the standard but is the reality we have to face. Next, please.

Just like the problems faced by so many cities worldwide, as Fernanda warned, Paraisopolis is going through an even more critical and chaotic situation. as you can see in this news in the several journals here in Brazil. Here, we can see what the current situation is like for the residents of Paraisopolis, where we are often unable to identify where is the river that crosses the community begins and ends.

The first step of the process was to understand the context. And for this, we started using Infraworks to obtain the analysis surface. Secondly, we incorporate GIS data from the city and Infraworks data into Civil 3D. And the third, we import all this data into Infraworks ICM to draw all the boundary conditions.

We predict a scenario created. We started modeling for the study of floods. We imported a typical rainfall where the region was significantly affected and run the simulation in Infoworks ICM. From this [INAUDIBLE] present, we can see that it corresponds to what happened at the location.

Here, the video shows the simulation of one hour of heavy rain and the impact of this has on the entire community. Even when the rain ends, the water takes a while to drain generating a huge hit in all the region.

We can export these maximum floods for better visualization and communication in Civil 3D and Infraworks. You have a clear idea of the community's impacted from the rain with these visualizations. With this in mind, the project generate is to mitigate the problem and integrate the river into the community making the river part of the solution and not the problem itself. With

The same idea, we now reproduce the scenario with the design inside Infoworks ICM. We can see in the simulation, that despite some points of adaptation, that the project must still take into consideration there is no longer a systemic flooding concentrated even in the design system.

Here, the animation shows how they represent straightforwardly through the project and the solution effectiveness. Even in the region with the small [INAUDIBLE], it just a few millimeters in size of the drain quickly but is the most-- be investigates to mitigate this problem in the future.

In the same way, we can visualize the results obtained in Infraworks within the most diverse Autodesk platform showing that is the powerful solution to help cities worldwide while facing growing and ever-present flooding problems.

FERNANDA MACHADO: That's awesome, Pedro. In addition to the floods, several collateral disasters damaged municipalities and their population. Among the collateral disasters of floods, are landslides. According to the World Health Organization, between 1998 and 2017, landslides affected an estimated 4.8 million people and caused more than 18,000 deaths globally.

A red flag is that climate change and rising temperatures are expected to trigger more landslides. And why not use GIS and BIM-based approach to map disasters, understand events, and manage preventative activities. We developed a representative case study for the Brazilian city of Recife.

In 2022, more than 90 people died due to heavy rains in the region and landslides. One of the most powerful quotes from residents to a newspaper after the disaster was, "when it rains, we don't sleep." Given the history of problems of this nature, the municipality successfully raised resources to work on retaining walls and stabilizing slopes in the most critical areas of the city. The GIS BIM connection is essential in digitizing this process and planning solutions.

So you can see the screen, the disaster picture and some of the stunning solutions the municipality was looking for. Well, in our study, we integrated registration data from the GIS database with Infraworks to virtually rebuild the city of Recife in 3D.

In addition to public data, the municipality made available layers with data referring to the most critical food points and map its landslide events. So now it is possible to navigate in the as-is contacts and study all the variables before planning this new solution to mitigate risk.

As a benefit, the city information model provides actual data and context for planning conceptual studies and high-level decision making. One of the great markers of this integration, is the ability of public management to predict investments related to mitigating the risk of new disasters considering each neighborhood's physical and socioeconomic characteristics. Beyond that, it's really easy to manipulate these models and extract powerful data to subsidize the budgets forecast.

JOYCE DELATORRE: That's awesome, Fernanda. So let's move it for another application. That's traffic microsimulation for mobility. You probably know about the big problem of traffic jams. In the US alone, it costs a whopping 305 billion less a year.

But it's not just about money. It's also about the time we waste the harm to our environment. To help citizens deal with this challenge, we've got an example of how microsimulation can be used to study different designs and see how new developments affect a city.

We know that cities are responsible for 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with more than one third of these emissions coming from the transportation sector. According to Statista, passenger vehicles have been one of the main sources of gas emissions with significant growth over the past two decades. In this first computer simulation conducted in the Sao Paulo region, a comparative evolution of multiple road intervention scenarios associated with carbon reduction policies was performed.

Using traffic using traffic data collected during peak hours on a typical workday in March 2023 in Sao Paulo, we focus on the [INAUDIBLE] region in the city center for simulation and analysis. We identified congestion points and created evaluation scenarios. In Autodesk Infraworks, we generated a BIM as-is model of the city incorporating road networks, buildings, wire bodies from OpenStreetMap, satellite imagery from Microsoft Bing maps, and elevation map data from global terrain data sources.

This model helped us understand existing traffic conditions and estimated origin destination data from the simulation model. With established origin destination profile, an initial simulation was conducted considering the real context, where the area features a signalized urban intersection. With the same origin destination data, an alternative intersection was modeled, including a roundabout as a project option.

Comparing the scenarios, an urban intersection and alternatives, traffic microsimulation highlights that the design option with a roundabout offers better traffic flow. This is evidenced by the generation of marked repeats in the same simulation period. 2007 streets compared to the 1,180 in the existing condition, with a lower average time and carbon emissions per trip.

The existing signalized condition indicates lower total CO2 emissions. However, this is in a scenario with fewer trips due to stops and congestion.

PEDRO SOETHE: Great, very nice, Joyce. Now let's talk about another big problem in Brazil and all the world, the streets and avenues of our cities. Several cities [INAUDIBLE] faced problems with the pavements. And solutions are expensive and time consuming to find where these issues are with this place.

Conservation failures and lack of maintenance of the road network resulted in direct losses to public administration, which includes up to 50% increase of the number of accidents due to roads in poor conditions, more than 58% increase in fuel consumption, and up 100% increase in travel time affecting the municipality and the cities productivity. These impacts generate a latent demand for maintenance plan on roads that connect cities and with urban limits.

In this sense, there is a need for procedures that simplify and support the analysis of the pavement and the resolution of identified pathologies, such as reality capture, Building Information Modeling, or BIM, Geographic Information System or GIS. And the municipality can deal with a limited budget with low-cost capture devices. The return on the investment is significant.

This results from the registration carried out of a section of a street here in Brazil using a mobile device with an onboard LiDAR sensor. Traditionally, this type of procedure is carried out with a total station and operate by at least two people. With this procedure, the millimeter precision registration, known as point cloud model, was processed in ReCap Pro to support the visual inspection method and prepare a pavement diagnosis and assessment.

Navigation, this section understand the details and record in in-situ characteristics and the respective dimensions is possible. Cloud manipulation allow us, for example, to engage, find, classify, and count occurrence in this section, such as cracks, patch, and wear reducing of the need for a new field visits. Next.

Integrated point cloud model with Bing solutions for infrastructure, expands the possibility for evaluation the pavement. With the integration and geolocation of the registration in Civil 3D, it was possible to reproduce features such as guide, gutters, [INAUDIBLE] and lobes, maintains roles and access to lot.

We generate the pavement surface using the point cloud and bringing interpolation modeling. Thus, it becomes possible to visualize the contour lines and create in an automated and parametric way, the longitudinal profile of the street and in these cross-sections.

As a result of BIM modeling, it's possible to simulate pavement recovery projects options such as resurfacing proposals, milling with resurface, resurface and leveling, and variation arising from transverse and longitudinal corrections, tearing off and extracting quantities relating to pavement, curbs, and gutters. It's also simplified and becomes easy to analyze the transverse and longitudinal feeds and generate several implemented pavement recovery solutions.

The possibility for automation within the project are countless. Problems logged can be embedded in the design environment through the visual programming routines created in Dynamo, for example. Here, the routines are nothing more than scripting text. In this case, allow the association of the coordinate of each picture in a photo taken on site with the same mobile device used to scan the pavement. Index benefits they stood offer recurring solutions.

As a result, the potential benefits are cost optimization of maintenance plans and projects, reduction in the number of accidents and vehicle operation costs, and increase the population's quality of life.

JOYCE DELATORRE: So let's see another application that is E-permitting with Bing. Across the globe, municipalities face a common challenge, the need to speed up the project license process. As cities and towns grow, the demand for permits and approvals increases. And with it, the difficult for local governments to keep pace with the rising number of required processes.

Let's dive into some common challenges that many cities face when it comes to approving projects. These issues aren't unique to any one place. They are widespread and can really slow down the whole process.

First up, we've got the challenge of diverse local roles. Every city and town has its own way of doing things, especially when it comes to reviewing and approving building permits. They also have their local building codes to follow.

Next, with regard to the issue of lack of information, sometimes the documents we get for projects are incomplete or just plain unclear. And then there's the problem of limited government resources. Our government agencies might not have enough people or time, especially when there is a bunch of projects piling up at the same time. These resources is shortage can lead to some pretty significant delays.

And how can Autodesk Platform Services help? Imagine it being able to create a system where citizens can electronically submit their projects. And an automated system can analyze the project checking whether it meets the minimum requirements according to the local building code for approval.

This first example showcases the process of a city submitting the project directly on the local municipalities website. The system conducts an initial analysis to determine if the project complies with the minimum requirements outlined in the local building code.

At this stage, it examines general project information such as zoning, building areas, and permeable area. In this specific case, the project does not meet the minimum permeable area requirements. And as a result, the citizens receives a notification alerting them to revise the project.

Following the request for a project revision, the citizen submits a new version of the project. In this case, the system detects that the project now complies with the necessary minimum permeable area. As a result, it allows the process to proceed either for a technical analysis or for the issuance of the permit.

This demonstrates how the system streamline s the approval process, ensuring that projects adhere to local building code requirements before processing to the next stage. In this simulation, we focus on the analysis of 2D project information. However, it can incorporate the reading and analysis of additional building information modeling data. In

Summary E-permitting offers a range of notable benefits. Pre-analysis of project information, the system conducts a preliminary analysis of project information. This ensures that submissions meet the necessary requirements from the outset saving time and avoiding rework, improving communication between applicants and municipal authorities, providing clear guidance on application requirements and submission deadlines and faster approval. By receiving very prepared submissions, municipal departments can process them more quickly, reducing approval times and eliminating delays.

FERNANDA MACHADO: We have rated the fifth and final application, asset management. Digital assets are the new driver of architecture, engineering, and construction sector. And BIM ensures owners receive a final digital asset to manage their whole project's life cycle.

Well, digital assets are correlated to digital twins. And the global digital twin market size is projected to reach $48 billion by 2026. Let's explore two different examples, one for buildings and another for infrastructure, related to digital assets.

One of the Sustainable Development Goals for enabling sustainable cities and communities, is to strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world's cultural and natural heritage. As you can see, public management can easily apply this contributing process to build a digital asset or inventory to address this challenge.

The Ipiranga Museum is a historical building located in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It opened in 1895 and is a milestone of Brazil's independence. It has a unique architecture, eclectic, and an extensive collection of over 450,000 units. Its status right now is open after a long renovation, expansion, and modernization using reality capture technology, GIS, and BIM which digitized more than 161,000 square meters comprising the museum and the Independence Park.

Through a collaborative process in Autodesk Construction Cloud, it was possible to engage all stakeholders of this digitization project and ensure accurate as-is modeling of the assets associating geometry, semantics, and data. The digitalization guarantees the preservation of memory and heritage and its model become a reference for future restorations, expansions, or modernizations. It is valuable for the project's life cycle data management.

Previously, traditional spec inspection was a six-step manual process with disconnected data at every stage and ripe for human error. Now, [INAUDIBLE] match created a customized viewer that digitizes the infrastructure inspection process by connecting surfacing and visualizing data into a dashboard with the help of Autodesk platform services. No lengthy math being processed back to the office is required.

By grouping anomalies, sometimes in the thousands, into graphic analysis, this APS part solution enables engineers to quickly assess the most critical needs. It gives public customers a crystal-clear view of asset conditions. As you can see on the screen, we have here Autodesk Build with the digital forms enabling a worker to map the main anomalies identified in this bridge. Assessments and decision making at every step improve.

Well, the process optimization produce results. Their highlights are better communication with public customers through 3D visualizations and graphics, improved inspection accuracy, and labor-related project expenses reduced up to 25%.

OK, we have navigated through five powerful applications that shed light on the new possible and what to expect from the cities of the future. The fact is that technology with vision is effective in providing the results presented in this section. There needs to be a cultural transformation of public management and openness to incorporate innovations that benefits the quality of public services.

We explored how to address critical global challenges, digitizing automated processes, achieving operational efficiency, and most importantly, advancing quality of life for the population. In the name of the team, thank you.