Vegas sees safe bet in digital twin to make its downtown smarter, more efficient

The city of Las Vegas and private partners are implementing a digital twin for much of the downtown area to improve mobility, air quality, noise pollution, water management and emissions from major buildings.

“Las Vegas will have a city-scale digital twin that is driven by the physical environment and ultimately letting us control key systems through it,” said Las Vegas Chief Innovation Officer Michael Sherwood in statement. “This will give us new levels of insights and control to benefit city planners, residents and businesses.”

Sherwood and Las Vegas have been strong proponents for smart city technologies in recent years, attracting attention for technologies to monitor crowd movements an autonomous shuttle on a downtown route.

 The digital twin technology will set a benchmark for other cities to become more efficient, safer and sustainable, he said.

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The digital twin technology will come from Chicago-based Cityzenith as part of its Clean Cities-Clean Future project to implements its SmartWorldOS Digital Twin platform in major cities globally.

Las Vegas is the second city to participate in Clean Cities – Clean Future after New York.  Phoenix, Arizona, and other major cities are expected to follow.

Cityzenith CEO Michael Jansen said digital twin and IoT technology working together can transform mobility, walkability and emissions and air pollution.  The Las Vegas project will attempt to show local building owners they can “dramatically reduce operating costs and emissions for little to no investment,” he said.

Technology from Terbine will aggregate IoT data from local government agencies, building operators, transportation systems, vehicles and other “things” to provide sensor data for the digital twin.

The first iteration of the digital twin will be shown at CES 2022 in Vegas Jan. 5-8.