The United Nations reports that 70% of the world's population will live in cities, consume 78% of the world's energy and produce more than 70% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. These numbers serve as a call to action for cities to lead sustainability efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

However, city leaders face significant hurdles in implementing sustainability and resilience initiatives. Many cities often lack the technical resources to develop urban digital twins. They also have siloed organization and data, making it hard to collect and share accurate information for a holistic view of the city. So, how can cities overcome these challenges and make a difference in environmental management efforts?

Dassault Systèmes’ Vision for Climate Change Action With Jacques Beltran, Cities & Public Services Industry Vice President

How To Build Resilience to Climate Change and Increase Environmental Sustainability?

Disruptive climate change events such as heat islands, urban flooding and pollution accentuate the need for city leaders to prioritize environmental management initiatives. According to the United Nations, digital transformation will determine the success of cities in securing sustainability and resilience for future generations. As such, many cities are already committing to climate change action by laying the digital groundwork and investing capital in advanced virtual twin and simulation technologies.

Six Use Cases. Six Urban Planning Revolutions.

Access use cases demonstrating how the city virtual twin helps cities address extreme temperatures, air and noise pollution, urban flooding and energy use for public infrastructure.

Why is Digital Transformation Important for Sustainable Urban Development?

Building resilience to become a liveable future-ready city is a long-term journey. Executing sustainable public policies for growth and resilience requires city leaders to anticipate the impact of each decision every step of the way,” says Mahel Abaab-Fournial, Dassault Systèmes’ Business Strategy Director for Cities & Public Services Industry.

Abaab-Fournial adds, “To understand the complexity of a city’s system of systems, the urban development ecosystem must make sense of the complex volumes of data that are rapidly generated. They need to input data based on what-if scenarios, choose the best outcomes and implement them in the real world. This is the main purpose for end-to-end digital transformation and the implementation of city virtual twins."

The Shortcut to a Sustainable Future

Digital transformation goes beyond plugging digital interfaces into traditional infrastructures or streamlining city operations. Furthermore, creating, operating and maintaining a city virtual twin would require digital transformation maturity, which many cities today often lack.

With that in mind, the Sustainability and Resilience Cockpit for Cities is a turnkey urban planning solution that taps into Dassault Systèmes' 40 years of expertise in virtual twin technology. It leverages Virtual Twin as a Service (VTaaS) to accelerate the digital capabilities of cities and expedite the creation of virtual twins, helping cities to:

Break free from resource limitations

Bear minimum risk and costs

Obtain fast results in climate change action

Achieving the best results within the shortest timeframe is critical for effective climate change action. This is where VTaaS adds value, especially for cities without extensive capital or technical resources.

Elie Beignon > Dassault Systèmes®

Elie Beignon

VTaaS Senior Director, Infrastructure & Cities, Dassault Systèmes

By connecting data, people and processes in a collaborative cloud-based environment, the Sustainability and Resilience Cockpit for Cities provides decision-makers access to actionable and up-to-date data insights. This will help them make evidence-based decisions to improve public service and community engagement in all environmental management efforts.

Additionally, the Cockpit is positioned to work across a more complex, data- powered landscape that supports full visibility and end-to-end collaboration. As the single source of truth, it ties all information, decisions and history together to provide a holistic view of a city’s condition and related variables.

Take Action for Tomorrow, Today

Imagine a virtual risk-free playground where the potential impacts of public policies can be simulated and rapidly refined in real time to combat disruptive climate change events.

Flooding

Most flooding events are preventable if cities can plan ahead and prepare mitigation actions. This project demonstrates how a city virtual twin is used to create a 3D hazard map on flood predictions.

With Dassault Systèmes' Sustainability and Resilience Cockpit for Cities as a digital technology lever, virtual twins pave the way to plan smarter, build for purpose faster and effectively drive the sustainable city agenda forward.

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