US-based international infrastructure engineering software company Bentley Systems has updated its iTwin digital twin platform to incorporate the iTwin Experience, which it describes as a "single pane of glass" that helps owner-operators and their supply chains to visualise, analyse, manage, and share digital twin data for infrastructure.
The tool, announced at Environment Analyst’s Global Business Summit in Chicago last month, enables carbon assessment capabilities to be accessed from the iTwin platform, thanks to "ready-to-go, bi-directional integration" with the firm’s embodied carbon calculator EC3. The functionality enables carbon assessments to be visualised in a digital twin without the need to write code, enabling engineers to quickly see potential and realised upfront embodied carbon in a proposed infrastructure project.
Bentley says the new capabilities in iTwin Experience transform what is typically a six-month process into a six-minute workflow.
Digital twin modelling is used to help test and optimise approaches for accelerating decarbonisation while reducing costs, and is considered especially useful in decision-making for projects in complex, hard-to-abate sectors like construction, water, electrical utilities, and transportation.