At its annual Year in Infrastructure (YII) conference in Singapore, infrastructure engineering software company Bentley Systems described 2023 as a “groundbreaking year” for infrastructure intelligence. Citing users’ projects, CEO Greg Bentley highlighted how infrastructure organisations are overcoming the engineering resource capacity gap through infrastructure intelligence strategies. When asked to quantify the engineering hours saved through digital advancements, the Going Digital Awards finalists reported median savings of 18%.
As an indication that digital twins are becoming mainstream as well, the proportion of Going DigitalAwards finalists crediting iTwin has risen to 64% in 2023. Engineering data serves as the foundation and digital twins as the building blocks of infrastructure intelligence. With iTwin Platform, engineering data in Bentley Infrastructure Cloud — ProjectWise for project delivery, SYNCHRO for construction, and AssetWise for asset operations — can be aligned, queried, and managed to increase infrastructure intelligence over the lifecycle of projects and assets. Bentley Systems estimates that the company’s engineering users accumulate at least 100 million new unique digital components per month within their ProjectWise environments, teeing up infrastructure intelligence benefits across construction, operations, and maintenance.
To compound data value and reuse digital components, infrastructure intelligence strategies include integrating subsurface modelling — and incorporating into digital twins — operational data from Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, drones, and crowdsourcing, according to the CEO. Going Digital Awards finalists and organisations in Singapore are also reportedly accelerating their infrastructure intelligence through artificial intelligence (AI).
For instance, PUB, Singapore’s national water agency, is working in collaboration with Bentley Systems on a Singapore National Research Foundation-funded project to develop a new system in detecting and localising water system anomalies and leaks in real time. Through a high-fidelity digital twin, AI-based predictive models, and hydraulic network model calibration and simulation, the project could help in improving network resilience and water conservation.
Embracing AI potential to accelerate infrastructure intelligence, the company highlighted its existing analytical AI capabilities — powered by iTwin — for asset monitoring and its multi-faceted approach to generative AI for design. Guided by the company’s commitment to help users gain value from their own engineering data secured in Bentley Infrastructure Cloud, iTwin maximises the potential from generative AI, and ensures each account retains explicit access and control.
