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Digital Twin R&D accelerates



By Robyn Francis | Global Engagement Coordinator | Smart Cities Council


The Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures and Land Administration (CSDILA) at The University of Melbourne has developed leading-edge digital twin solutions with industry and government partners, providing some of the foundational work that now underpins leading policy and project work, such as that being advanced by Digital Twin Victoria.


At Digital Twin Week 2021 the team provided an overview on CSDILA's latest research and development on using Digital Twin.


Joining the session was:

Prof. Abbas Rajabifard, FIEAust, Hon. FSSSI

Dr. Soheil Sabri, MPIA, MSSSI

Dr. Benny Chen


The Centre was established in 2001, and is committed to excellence in research, innovation and training, with a strong focus on future-proofing research. CSDILA focuses on the role of land and spatial information in supporting changing modern societies and spatial enablement in government and wider communities. CSDILA domains of work include:


To maximise ROI and travel from the real world to the digital world, toward modernisation of LAS enabled by a 3D Cadastre and Digital Twin, the CSDILA shared how they have outlined a pathway that moves through:

  • 2D Cadastre

  • 2D Spatially Accurate Parcel Fabric

  • #D Parcel Fabric

  • 3D Digital Cadastre

...to end up in a digital economy.


Finally, we learned about a new industry transformation research hub that will be launching soon to help build resilient and intelligent infrastructure systems in urban resources and energy sectors that will look at five research and innovation themes:

  • Sensing, intelligent and adaptive systems

  • Data collection, security and integration

  • Modeling, simulations and prognostics

  • Infrastructure health monitoring and predictive maintenance

  • Spatial data, digital twins and decision support.

The hub brings together:

  • 4 Universities

  • 6 schools

  • 5 universities / centres

  • 22 CIs

  • 17 Industry partners

  • 5 government agencies

  • 7-10 postdoctoral fellows

  • 15-20 PhD students.

Making sense of emerging technologies, guests were walked through social shaping technology such as IoT and Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) in digital twin, situational awareness (real time dynamics) and explainable, human centric digital twins to deliver community engagement and co-design.


Supporting the Digital Twin community and ecosystem was next on the agenda for this session, for which design and sharing of an evolving digital twin was outlined, along with plans to create DT plugins and APIs that can be used by and support the community at large. A number of plugins and APIs have been created already.


To create a developer account, contact CSDILA directly or register through digitwin.com.au


A recording of this session will be made available on the Smart Cities Academy website on November 1 2021. Subscribers to the DT Hub will be notified when available.

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