Digital Twins, EVs and AI: Next Urban Evolution Has Begun

From a resident’s perspective, the smart city of the future is frictionless, simpler and easier to navigate. That’s the message from the Smart Cities, Future Mobility and Powering AI panel at The Urban Developer ’s Urbanity-26 on the Gold Coast. Future Charging Solutions’ Nas Jafari told attendees that “the whole technology is there now”. “It’s about do you see that as a necessity for the building, or as something that’s good to have?” Developers who integrate electric vehicle charging stations into a project from the outset will generally pay construction costs about $4000 higher per apartment, but can benefit from about a 5 per cent increase in sales value. “It’s not only about the quality of the building, it’s about what you provide.” But “smart technology needs smart people”, Jafari said. Some developers will leave space for future integration of charging infrastructure, but leave its final investment decision for strata owners. However, retrofitting and post-hoc, mutual financial decision-making can be much more fraught than planning for EVs from the outset. “When it comes to strata communities, complexity is the problem,” Jafari said. “Believe it or not, the hardest part is getting the public to agree on something which is Australia’s future.” Ollo’s Luke Rust agreed, saying that developers were increasingly planning ahead for shared vehicles, while local governments are encouraging them with reduced parking allocations. “Early on, we were an amenity that was bolted on. Now, developers use us much earlier to drive outcomes,” Rust said. “Designing flexibility early is important. “Every council location has its quirks, but the trend [towards shared mobility] is the same.” ▲ Cross River Rail Authority’s Russell Vine: The authority learned from Virtual Singapore, a digital twin model that covers the entire island nation. The Cross River Rail Authority’s Russell Vine told attendees that managing the massive data streams produced by a smart city is a crucial component to getting it right. “Four underground stations along a train tunnel are equivalent to 15-storey buildings… so they’re huge infrastructure endeavors”, Vine said. The authority learned from Virtual Singapore, a digital twin model that covers the entire island nation. Traffic and public transport flows, the electricity grid, and even weather are incorporated into the model. Vine said lessons included integrating every source of Building Information Modelling, as well as geospatial land mapping, into a single framework. For the Cross River Rail project, a ready-made videogame technology like the Unreal Engine was the solution. “You get a digital twin that is technically accurate. It is actually a virtual environment that you can spawn yourself into in first person, or you can get a bunch of people in and travel around together. “You build the digital version years in advance of the real version.” As shared vehicles become more common, underused basement car parks could exploit their thermal properties to host data centre infrastructure, Vine said. However, a high-level digital twin such as Virtual Singapore, or that which CRR is building, would be needed to unlock the full potential of a smart city. “I do advocate for government—sorry, everybody in the private sector—for government to standardise certain things. So that it can control some kind of master model environment.”

Infrastructure
Patrick Lau
Thu 23 Jul 26

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InfrastructurePatrick LauThu 23 Jul 26

Digital Twins, EVs and AI: Next Urban Evolution Has Begun

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Infrastructure
Patrick Lau
Thu 23 Jul 26