Los Angeles will create a digital twin of a section of the city to help make its buildings more sustainable and decrease carbon emissions. The city will work with Cityzenith, a digital twin platform that’ll provide the digital twin free of charge and allow decarbonization strategies to be tested virtually before the methods are used in the real world.
The digital twin project in LA will initially focus on Bunker Hill, a downtown neighborhood in the city. The partnership with the digital twin platform is expected to help LA work toward achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 in its building sector, which accounts for 43 percent of the city’s total emissions. A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical object or process. In real estate, digital twins are real-time databases of a building’s ecosystem, enabling operators to identify ways to reconfigure and enhance properties, including decreasing carbon emissions.
Cityzenith has already implemented digital twin tech in New York City and Phoenix as part of its initiative to lower urban carbon emissions. An increasing number of cities like Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Las Vegas are also using digital twin technology for other uses, such as reducing traffic flows. Digital twins and other climate change tech will be critical in helping cities decarbonize their buildings, and real estate professionals should expect increasing use of digital twins as the efforts to decarbonize buildings continue.