Canada’s Digital Twin
A Web-Baseda Canada’s Digital Twin: A Web-Based Platform for GIS/BIM Open Data Integration in the AECOO Industry Platform for GIS/BIM Open Data Integration in the AECOO Industry
The AECOO industry lags in digital adoption, partly due to reliance on proprietary systems that reinforce data silos1. Too often, data handover is a time-intensive process due to closed data formats, software compatibility, and the absence of an application to host, interact and share information. As a result, collaboration across the whole project lifecycle is marred by limited transparency and poor data quality. Open-source digital twin (DT) technologies combined with the principles of open data — available, accessible, and persistent — have the potential to revolutionize the way the AECOO industry manages information and decision-making processes through all stages of a project lifecycle.
High-Level Solution
A DT is an ecosystem of multi-dimensional and interoperable subsystems that ties together place-making and cybernetics [Figure 2]. Digital Built Britain defines a digital twin as “...a realistic digital representation of assets, processes or systems in the built or natural environment… that adds social and economic value by augmenting the decision-making process.”2 Employing DT technology is a way to optimize the entire lifecycle of the built environment. CDT is unique in its scale and commitment to accessibility through the use of open-source technologies and open standards.
Solution Details
The revolutionary concept of a national DT began as Imagining Canada’s Digital Twin (ICDT), a two-year project funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) to address the opportunities, challenges, and responsibilities involved in developing a DT for Canada. In 2021, Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) began developing a DT of the built environment, concentrating on the AECOO industry to create a platform that is:
Due to its web-based nature, the application is accessible and available to the widest audience without the need to download and install any additional software. Technologies are leveraged to fetch data directly from available open data portals, removing the need for data storage and ensuring that data is up-to-date [Figure 3]. Vendor-neutral formats are used to encourage the use of open standards and support the sharing of information.
A CDT prototype has been employed for development projects such as the rehabilitation of Downsview Park in Toronto, social initiatives such as visualizing affordable housing, and environmental purposes, including mapping wildfires [Figure 4]. Additionally, it has been used for facility management and planning in Carleton University’s DT project [Figure 5], as well as in collaboration with governmental entities on projects, including the creation of a federal asset management tool for the Department of National Defence (DND) and the National Research Council (NRC).
Business Benefits
CDT allows users to access information and tools freely, collaborate with other users, and add digital media within an interface that is familiar and intuitive, even without prior technical knowledge of the application. Utilizing open-source solutions, CDT provides a non-proprietary and web-based platform to visualize and engage with open data collected from various disciplines. Data security and privacy are respected through an authentication system that assigns credentials and connects to personal or group-based local or cloud servers. Version control through Git and Github provides an audit trail and enables collaborative development.
The platform will be a valuable tool, especially for small to medium enterprises that typically do not have as sufficient resources as larger organizations to acquire software licences. Reducing barriers to information will positively impact Canadians by allowing users to gain a more comprehensive understanding of context and potential impacts for projects at various scales [Figure 6]. The dynamic nature of DTs allows the platform to improve transparency and facilitate iterative adjustments in the digital world to optimize conditions in the real world. CDT supports community-driven innovation by providing tools to engage with the freely available data and employing open standards to coordinate, describe and improve the usefulness of hosted datasets.
What’s Next?
To ensure the long-term success of CDT, a not-for-profit organization (NFP) was established in early 2025 to govern and maintain the open-source platform. The NFP is dedicated to creating a dynamic, collaborative, and transparent ecosystem that empowers digital innovation. Its mission is to ensure that CDT remains universally accessible, championing interoperability through open standards and driving the development of cutting-edge tools and features that meet the diverse and evolving needs of users across Canada and beyond. The NFP is committed to advancing open data principles, fostering transformative cross-disciplinary collaboration, and providing a solution to proprietary constraints.
At the heart of this effort is an unwavering commitment to community engagement, ensuring CDT thrives as an open, adaptable, and continuously evolving platform. Developers, researchers, industry leaders, and public-sector visionaries are invited to join us and shape the future of this initiative through collaborative coding, open repositories, and shared governance to advance the platform’s development. By cultivating a vibrant, participatory community, the NFP aims to ignite a movement that co-creates solutions, accelerates innovation, and solidifies CDT’s role as a transformative tool for reimagining and optimizing the built and natural environment.
With a beta release planned for the summer of 2025, CDT will provide early adopters with a functional preview of its capabilities, focusing on real-world applications in asset management, environmental monitoring, and planning. This milestone will offer an opportunity for stakeholders across industries to explore the platform’s potential, provide feedback, and shape its ongoing development. By actively engaging the community during this pivotal phase, the NFP aims to refine CDT’s features and ensure it delivers meaningful solutions that align with user needs and priorities.
Conclusion
Proprietary technologies may offer advanced functionality and some compatibility with other proprietary systems. Still, their industry dominance, high licensing costs, monopolistic and vendor-lock-in practices, and tendency to work with closed file formats, among others, are problematic for innovation and collaboration. In the AECOO industry, geospatial data describing the built and natural environment can optimize the design and construction phase of a building’s life cycle by providing surrounding context to the design. GIS and building design software exist within separate proprietary systems with formats that do not easily integrate different data types [Figure 7]. Unless these datasets can be layered, cross-discipline analysis is challenging. CDT was developed in response to digital data-sharing barriers, resulting in a free and open web-based platform for visualizing and interacting with data to better plan and monitor the built environment. By incorporating 3D models, CAD files, point cloud, map tiles, and other data types, CDT promotes buy-in from the industry, expands upon the scale of previous DTs, and makes a significant contribution to the ongoing implementation of open standards by buildingSMART International (bSI), Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and data integration. Operating under a governance structure that ensures that the platform remains inclusive, independent, and committed to open principles is essential. The beta release of CDT is planned for 2025.
