CIMS’ Canada’s Digital Twin project recognized for innovation, research

The Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) has won top honours for its Canada’s Digital Twin project at the 2024 Innovation Spotlight Awards given by the Building Transformations organization.

Canada’s Digital Twin is the first initiative to develop a digital twin at a national scale. It is a web-based, non-proprietary platform that links physical assets and their digital equivalents. Users can interact with and visualize multi-scale geospatial information systems, open data, building information modelling, and other media.

CIMS, a research lab affiliated with the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism, plans to release the code as an open-source project and the platform for free in 2025.

The CIMS team received the highest award — the Best in Innovation Award recognizes overall excellence in innovation across all categories. CIMS also took the Research Award, which highlights projects that push boundaries in understanding and applying innovative solutions. The award ceremony took place on Dec. 5 in Toronto.

The project was initiated in 2019 by Professor Stephen Fai, the director of CIMS, and Lara Chow, the associate director, with support from the New Frontiers in Research Fund.

“Industry-wide recognition proves that what we are doing at CIMS has a tangible impact on the industry,” says Nicolas Arellano, who is leading the team currently developing Canada’s Digital Twin.

The team members are Ken Percy, Darren Pierre, Yasmine Arshad, Lauren Daniels, Julie Ivanoff, Tyrell Haywood, Clint Galvez, Filipe Costa, and Jeremie Lafleche. Many others have contributed to the project over the years.

“Canada’s Digital Twin represents over a decade of ongoing research and development at CIMS,” says Dr. Fai. “We have an outstanding team and Nico is an exceptional team lead.”

The awards recognize “a very innovative and collaborative approach, a unique way of looking at software and technology,” says Arellano, a PhD candidate at the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism. “Our industry has a big gap for these technologies; they have recognized that we are in a good position to address that.”

Canada’s Digital Twin is being developed to address data trapped in proprietary formats and the absence of any application to host and interact with open data from a variety of sources.

These include open geospatial data, such as Natural Resources Canada, Open Ontario, Open Ottawa, wildfires data from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, affordable housing data, and census data in multiple formats.

“The users could be anyone with a digital device that has access to a web browser on computers, tablets, and mobile devices, but we are also targeting government and industry groups who want to build bespoke applications on top of the base technology,” explains Arellano.

“There is nothing at this scale built exclusively with open-source technologies and based on open standards from BuildingSmart International and the Open Geospatial Consortium,” he says.

The platform leverages open-source technologies to fetch open data directly from available data portals, removing the need for data storage and ensuring that data is up to date.

“Democratizing data frees it from proprietary systems and provides an alternative space to host an open collection so that anyone has access to usable data to make informed decisions, solve problems, and improve workflows,” according to the project description.

The open-source initiative is funded by grants and industry contracts that build bespoke applications on top of the core software. The National Research Council and the Department of National Defence are currently funding the development of an asset management tool for federal-built assets.

Building Transformations, formerly CanBIM—Canada BIM Council, is North America’s largest not-for-profit organization focused on innovation and technology in the building and infrastructure industry. It serves as Canada’s business voice for the building and infrastructure community, working to advance digital technologies and practices.

Its annual Innovation Spotlight Awards program recognizes outstanding achievements in the building and infrastructure industry, with a focus on innovation and digital transformation.