DPA and VIZZIO to Form Partnership to Provide Digital Twin Explorer, a World-First AI-Powered Geospatial Platform for the Global Architecture Industry

DP Architects (DPA) and VIZZIO inked a strategic collaboration agreement today to further develop VIZZIO’s Digital Twin Explorer (DTE) into software products and services for the built environment sector. The agreement was signed by Ar. Seah Chee Huang, CEO of DPA and Dr. Jon Lee, CEO of VIZZIO Technologies.

The parties will explore commercialising the solutions, developed through a joint venture business established by both parties, designed to address the pain points of architects, urban planners and designers who have been continually challenged to achieve set performance criteria while delivering quality experience.

Architectural and urban planning teams spend a considerable amount of time getting to understand the client, the community and the environment the project will be in, well before any drawings are even started. A significant portion of their time is consumed acquiring large amounts of contextual data needed to begin a project which, more often than not, exist in silos where the data collection process starts from scratch with limited cross sharing. The challenge is further compounded by the relatability between the data generated for sustainability requirements and the design.

Recognising the challenges faced by these professionals, VIZZIO Technologies, a Singapore-based company that specialises in AI modelling and 3D visualisation will work with DPA to offer Digital Twin Explorer (DTE) hosted on cloud and based on a subscription model to customers. The collaboration entity will provide not just a digital twin city platform with 3D models from aerial to street, but also application tools to help architects, planners and engineers map, analyse, augment and experience their designs within a realistic designs in an “always-updated” simulation of the actual urban environment, accelerating decision-making processes.

DTE, backed by DPA’s deep knowledge of the built environment sector and the problems faced by designers, promises to deliver solutions for architects looking to make a positive impact with their projects, enabling a more efficient and less time-consuming workflow. For the first time, architects globally will be able to utilise a revolutionary platform that can generate dimensionally accurate 3D digital twin models of any city on planet earth, driven by VIZZIO’s AI-led technology.

DPA, a leading multidisciplinary design practice in Asia with 18 global offices strategically linked from Shanghai to London, is well placed and qualified to provide access to a pool of designers to conduct interviews and user-testing and, supply test data to validate the features of DTE. VIZZIO Technologies has been gaining worldwide recognition for developing digital twin technologies comprising computer graphics enhanced with artificial intelligence to provide realistic 3D models of cities, images and people.

“The DTE will revolutionise the way designers collect data, analyse environmental impacts and visualise the built environment. For instance, the DTE allows design teams to crowdsource 3D reality-capture, produce compelling virtual tours for community engagement, then analyse the community feedback directly on a single 3D virtual city-twin. We do this now in separate, time-consuming processes, often using abstract two-dimensional representations of data that are hard for non-professionals to understand,” said Chan Hui Min, director of DPA.

“The accelerating pace of urbanisation demands new approaches to the creation of digital mapping and geospatial analytical tools to improve the speed and quality of 3D city reconstructions while reducing the labor costs and time – modelling at city-scale. VIZZIO has created a real-time AAA video-game quality 3D digital twin of our planet, processing petabytes of satellite imagery & AI in near real-time and accuratelt extracting semantic information such as building footprints/heights, land use, bodies of water or infrastructure assets, streets or rail tracks to help drive participation and engagement with planners and architects, said Dr Jon Lee, CEO & Founder of VIZZIO Technologies.

He added, “VIZZIO is honoured to be partnering DPA, one of Asia’s largest architect firms, to develop an “always updated” semantic global digital twin – Digital Twin Explorer – empowering professionals in the built environment sector to embark on research and development and, conduct virtual experimentation, decision-making, promoting sandboxing innovation and test-bedding efforts, providing a powerful tool for visual story-telling and simulations.”