By using real-time data, projects are completed on time and within budget, while also providing valuable insights for ongoing maintenance and operational improvements
What is the role digital twin technology is playing in transforming India's transportation infrastructure?
Digital twin technology is changing India’s transportation infrastructure by helping organizations create dynamic, data-driven replicas of their assets. As an open and scalable platform, digital twins bring together data from different sources, allowing infrastructure professionals to make better decisions throughout the entire lifecycle – from design and construction to operation and maintenance. This approach encourages collaboration, breaks down data barriers, and leads to more efficient project delivery and better infrastructure performance.
For example, metro projects in Nagpur and Pune have used 5D Building Information Modeling (BIM), which combines 3D models with time and cost data to improve decision-making during design, construction, and handover. By using real-time data, projects are completed on time and within budget, while also providing valuable insights for ongoing maintenance and operational improvements. Without a digital twin, if issues arise in a project years after construction, details may be missing or hard to locate on paper. But with real-time, 3D records, problems can be found quickly, and solutions can be implemented more efficiently.
In India’s expanding aviation sector, digital twins are key in the construction, operation, and maintenance of new airports. These digital models improve collaboration and data sharing, making projects more efficient. By using AI and digital twin technology, airport professionals can improve runway inspections, making data collection and analysis easier. This increases safety and helps prioritize maintenance tasks with automated insights and AI-powered analysis. Across roadways, metros, bridges, and airports, digital twins make sure that project data stays accurate and updated, leading to better asset performance, smoother maintenance, and longer-lasting assets.
What are the key challenges in optimizing large-scale transportation projects such as rail systems and urban transit networks? How is your software aiding in overcoming these challenges?
Optimizing large-scale transportation projects, such as rail systems and urban transit networks, involves addressing several complex challenges:
Understanding existing asset conditions
Owner-operators face the challenge of safely and thoroughly inspecting and monitoring both above- and below-ground conditions, as well as analyzing data for actionable insights.This step is essential for making informed decisions that improve project efficiency, accessibility, safety, and resiliency while staying within budget and timelines. Bentley’s Asset Analytics offers solutions for all infrastructure industries to help understand physical asset conditions and their context, from asset capture and modeling to asset detection and analytics, asset monitoring, and network simulation and analytics. In addition to understanding conditions and context, a common obstacle that is often overlooked is ground risk. Subsurface issues can significantly impact costs, claims, and delays. Leveraging Bentley and its subsurface company, Seequent, for earth-modeling, analysis, data management, and collaboration software can unlock a common understanding of ground conditions to enable Geo professionals the ability to collaborate seamlessly with transportation professionals across the infrastructure lifecycle. This approach delivers projects faster, with greater certainty, and achieves better, more sustainable outcomes.
Collaboration among multiple stakeholders
Transportation projects involve diverse stakeholders, including government agencies, contractors, engineers, and local communities. Miscommunication, incompatible systems, and lack of real-time data can lead to errors, delays, and cost overruns. Effective data governance ensures that the large volumes of data generated – ranging from design plans to ongoing performance data – are accurate, accessible, and secure, supporting collaboration and minimizing disruptions. Bentley’s open data platforms and project delivery solutions facilitate seamless collaboration among diverse stakeholders, ensuring data is accurate, secure, and easily accessible, which helps reduce miscommunication and delays. Recognizing that stakeholders are at different points in their digital transformation journeys, Bentley offers solutions to bridge the transition from 2D to 3D, simplifying adoption and enhancing project outcomes.
Time and Interruptions to the Public
Infrastructure upgrades or construction often disrupt daily commuting or transportation services, causing inconvenience to the public. Efficient project planning and communication are key to reducing these impacts and maintaining public satisfaction. Bentley helps minimize disruptions to communities during transportation construction by providing advanced digital tools that enable better planning, design, and management. Through solutions like OpenRoads and OpenRail, transportation professionals can create detailed simulations and 3D models, identifying potential issues like traffic disruptions and environmental impacts early in the process. Bentley’s digital project management tools, such as SYNCHRO, optimize project scheduling and sequencing to reduce delays and limit the duration of disruptions like road closures. Real-time monitoring through digital twin technology allows teams to quickly address any emerging issues and adapt plans as needed, ensuring minimal impact on local traffic and daily life. Additionally, Bentley’s solutions foster collaboration between contractors, government agencies, and local stakeholders, facilitating transparent communication and proactive problem-solving.
As a leading infrastructure engineering software company, how do you support government agencies, EPC contractors, and infrastructure developers in driving digital transformation in transportation infrastructure?
As a leading infrastructure engineering software company, Bentley is not only invested in software and technology but also deeply committed to the infrastructure industry. We immerse ourselves in industry associations and government policy to stay aligned with the trends, standards, and requirements of agencies and their ecosystems. This ensures that our software and support continuously evolve to meet the needs of government agencies, EPC contractors, and infrastructure developers, helping drive digital transformation in transportation infrastructure. Bentley’s commitment to openness also helps drive digital transformation. By prioritizing open standards, open-source technologies, and open APIs, we enable users to easily access, utilize, and share data across platforms, fostering collaboration and innovation within the infrastructure sector. Open-source technology encourages widespread adoption, ensuring data can seamlessly flow across projects and lifecycle phases without being locked into proprietary systems. This is particularly important for long-lived infrastructure assets, where avoiding vendor dependency is critical. Bentley’s digital twin technology helps owner/operators retain control over their data, enhancing their ability to manage assets over time. Openness is essential in infrastructure projects due to their scale and complexity. These projects involve multiple organizations and disciplines, making it impractical to rely on a single vendor. By supporting open technology, we ensure data interoperability and adaptability across evolving software ecosystems. Additionally, Bentley has advanced open platforms like Cesium, the leading open-source 3D geospatial platform, which is used globally to create geospatial applications and further drives innovation in the industry.
In what ways can digital twins help in reducing project delays and cost overruns?
Digital twins can reduce project delays and cost overruns by providing real-time, accurate data to improve decision-making and streamline processes throughout a project’s lifecycle. Here's how:
Improved planning and design: Digital twins create a detailed, data-driven model of the project, allowing for better planning and early identification of potential issues, which helps avoid costly redesigns and delays.
Real-time monitoring: By integrating real-time data, digital twins offer continuous insights into the project’s progress and performance. This allows teams to address issues proactively, preventing delays and cost escalations.
Collaboration and communication: Digital twins ensure all stakeholders have access to the same up-to-date information, reducing miscommunication and ensuring alignment, thus preventing errors and rework.
Predictive maintenance: With predictive analytics, digital twins help anticipate maintenance needs, reducing unexpected downtime and the costs associated with unscheduled repairs.
Optimized resource management: Digital twins allow for better resource allocation by tracking progress and identifying areas for efficiency, reducing waste, and preventing cost overruns.
What role does advanced analytics, AI-driven insights and IoT play in enhancing predictive maintenance and operational efficiency in the transportation sector?
Advanced analytics, AI-driven insights, and IoT play a critical role in enhancing predictive maintenance and operational efficiency in the transportation sector by enabling real-time data collection, analysis, and proactive decision-making. Here’s how each contributes:
IoT: IoT devices, such as sensors embedded in infrastructure and vehicles, continuously collect real-time data on asset conditions, performance, and usage. This data provides a comprehensive view of the system’s health, allowing operators to monitor conditions like temperature, vibration, and wear in real-time.
Advanced analytics: By analyzing vast amounts of data from IoT devices, advanced analytics identifies patterns, trends, and anomalies. This allows transportation managers to detect early signs of potential failures, prioritize maintenance tasks, and prevent costly breakdowns. It also helps optimize scheduling and resource allocation, improving overall operational efficiency.
AI-driven insights: AI algorithms can analyze historical data alongside real-time inputs to predict when assets will need maintenance or replacement. By leveraging machine learning models, AI can continuously improve predictions, making maintenance more proactive rather than reactive. This leads to fewer unplanned downtimes, reduced maintenance costs, and extended asset life.
Together, IoT, AI, and advanced analytics help transportation organizations move from a reactive to a proactive maintenance approach, ensuring assets are optimized for performance, reducing disruptions, and improving overall efficiency.
What are the future trends in transportation digitalization? How is Bentley Systems aligning its software solutions and innovations to support this transformation?
AI is the defining technology of our time: The sheer scale and volume of data created from design to maintenance makes infrastructure a prime area where AI can have a great impact. Bentley has been investing in AI for several years and most recently introduced OpenSite+, the first engineering application leveraging generative AI for civil site design to deliver optimized, accurate site designs up to 10 times faster than traditional methods. OpenSite+ leverages an AI assistant, or “copilot,” and provides site layout optimizations and automated drawing production to drive new levels of productivity and accuracy. This new offering is the first of a new generation of Bentley Open Applications which run on desktops for optimal responsiveness, while offering the benefits of cloud-based applications, such as automatic updates and cross-operating system availability. The iTwin-native architecture enables seamless collaboration and data-centric workflows. Data is saved directly in a digital twin, which in turn can include data from other sources to provide full context for all design work.
How is Bentley Systems helping address the critical challenge of climate change and sustainability?
Bentley Systems is addressing the critical challenge of climate change and sustainability by leveraging technology to enhance infrastructure resilience and reduce environmental impact. By automating repetitive tasks, Bentley’s solutions allow engineers to focus on designing infrastructure that can better withstand severe weather events and extreme climates. For existing infrastructure affected by natural disasters, engineers can respond more swiftly to assess damage and develop solutions to rebuild stronger and more resilient structures. Going digital minimizes errors and rework, reducing material waste and field time, which helps lower the overall carbon footprint. Additionally, Bentley’s advancements in monitoring, detection, and AI-driven pattern recognition enable proactive maintenance, allowing engineers to stay ahead of aging infrastructure and prevent potential disasters. This approach extends the lifespan of assets and ultimately contributes to a higher quality of life for communities by ensuring safer, more sustainable infrastructure.
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