The Digital Twin Victoria program is a record $37.4 million investment in digital twin technology and spatial innovation that has combined trillions of data points into one online space to create a digital model of Victoria. The DTV Platform is a dynamic 3D digital representation of Victoria’s built and natural environment that can be used to plan, visualise, report on, and manage assets and operations from one single source of truth. The program is creating data-rich tools that will establish the digital foundations for a Future ReadyTM Victoria by using data to answer new questions and make better decisions.
WSP was engaged as Digital Twin Victoria’s Innovation and Solution Delivery Partner, to deliver projects across a range of digital twin use cases across government including utilities, construction, design and telecommunications. WSP has also worked with the DTV team to improve the security, scalability and back-end data management capabilities of the DTV Platform, enhancements that will feed back into Australia’s world-leading open source digital twin expertise built around CSIRO Data61’s Terria Digital Twin.
Collaborating with, CSIRO’s Data61, FrontierSI, PCSG, a Cohesive company, AAM, a Woolpert Company, 1Spatial, and UDEC Pty Ltd, WSP has enabled the delivery of a wide range of strategic, technical, and innovative services to support the development of new capabilities, extensions, and integrations to the Digital Twin Victoria Platform, an interface that brings together 2D and 3D data from across Victoria and over time. Through collaboration and forward-thinking, WSP has leveraged domain expertise, technical skills, and strategic insights to ensure that the DTV Platform continues to deliver real-world outcomes for major projects in ways that can be reused and adapted.
Realising efficiency and reduced risk for infrastructure projects
WSP, has been supporting our clients for decades in achieving their business objectives, through the application and development of digital tools in conjunction with engineering and environmental services. We understand where data and people intersect, know how to apply digital tools and data innovatively, and use these skills to identify the systems and information needed to support infrastructure, planning and environmental activities.
For example, on major projects, the process of identifying the location of existing utilities before beginning work can be costly and time consuming. Maps received from utilities companies showing the location of existing physical objects such as pipes and telephone lines are often outdated, difficult to read and sometimes inaccurate, which means they need to be checked, updated, and redrafted into digital, three-dimensional models before work can begin. This process can take months, and involves significant costs.
WSP worked with the DTV Utilities workstream to extend the DTV Platform so that it could support secure discovery and management of restricted utilities data in a shared, accessible and visual data environment so that these models can be easily accessed time and time again by project teams, reducing the costs for major projects and reducing disruptions to the community caused by utilities discovery works.
Improving the security, scalability and back-end data management for the DTV Platform
Previously, security requirements and disparate systems meant that information was often siloed within individual platforms, but with the robust security frameworks achieved through the DTV project, information is made more easily and more broadly accessible, without compromising on security. The approach involved an emphasis on improving existing platforms where possible, and building only when necessary. This method is expected to deliver far-reaching benefits that extend to the solutions and environments of Land Use Victoria and the various organisations that make use of them.
The solution leverages new and existing geospatial metadata, enhancements to widely used open source assets such as Terria and the STAC Specification, and the reuse and rationalisation of the Department’s widely leveraged feature manipulation engine (FME) systems. These enhancements support not only the DTV platform, but they also contribute to industry progression as these widely accessed tools and frameworks are further developed.
The Digital Twin Victoria program was developed to integrate and make accessible a large range of high-value, disparate datasets and bring together government, agencies, industry, and community stakeholders to discover and use data in one, easy-to-use web based platform. Delivering this standardised approach to creating, sharing, and evaluating data is an exciting opportunity to develop Victoria as a smart state that is connected, accessible, resilient, and liveable for the long term.
With Victoria’s Big Build set to deliver over 165 road and rail projects, the ability to visualise infrastructure information from roads, to rail, to utilities, to zoning alongside the engineering designs will be invaluable. Projects like this one showcase how meaningful partnership and collaboration across industry and government can improve systems to reduce spending, save time, and support Australia’s fastest growing state.
