The UNIGINE team presented a report about the real-time 3D visualization capabilities for creating innovative urban environments at the international Smart City 2019 symposium. The forum was held in the South Korean city of Daegu, attended by 1,300 participants from around the world, including experts from the United States, France, and Spain. The participants of the symposium were urban researchers, representatives of business and government, and the public.

Forty experts from Korea and other countries made speeches about different approaches to the smart city concept and technologies that could facilitate the work of designers and architects, as well as citizens’ lives. Marta Galceran, a senior consultant at Anteverti, an independent consulting company, and co-organizer of the largest Smart City Expo World Congress, shared her experience in implementing smart technologies in Barcelona. This process started in 2007 and is still ongoing, but Barcelona is already leading the list of smart cities in the world.

According to Marta Galceran, the city should develop in several directions at once to undergo a cohesive transformation. All elements of the system should be smart: water, lighting, and even the way of communication between citizens and the government. The final goal is a balanced and sustainable economic and social growth and open access to all municipal resources and programs for all residents at any point.

The real-time 3D visualization helps to avoid a large number of mistakes in urban planning and city management. This was the topic Denis Shergin, UNIGINE CEO, spoke on.

“VR technologies help to solve many problems even at an early stage of city design: to insert an object into an architectural image, to calculate and plan how the infrastructure would expand, and to increase operational efficiency. The digital twin of an individual enterprise, a city block, or an entire metropolitan area will help to optimize management of all processes”, — explained Denis Shergin.

One of the projects made with UNIGINE is a virtual Moscow (developed by MosGorGeoTrest, a part of the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Urban Planning). This is a 3D visualization of the metropolis, which is successfully used for making effective management decisions.

Digital twins and GIS projects based on the UNIGINE technologies were demonstrated and highly evaluated by many participants of the symposium. Photorealistic graphics and the scale of the projects were the main attractions.

However, a smart city cannot be created only through the smart technologies implementation. The citizens engagement is crucial in this process.

“Even the most advanced public transport control system will be useless if it is not clear and inconvenient for residents. The citizens should be involved in the discussion of all changes for successful development. An interactive 3D model will help to clearly present projects to residents and receive the feedback for making optimal decisions”, — says Eugenia Tashkun, Business Development Manager at UNIGINE.

The UNIGINE team returned from Daegu with new ideas and partners.

“The XXI century is the century of cities. So, technologies that help in urban planning and city management will be increasingly in demand. Having communicated directly with the participants of the process, we better understood their needs and pains. We also noticed an active interest in our technology”, — shared Denis Shergin.

UNIGINE has already started to work on a pilot project with new Korean partners and plans to offer an innovative solution.