Vancouver, Canada — Nicholas Cumins, CEO of Bentley Systems, delivered an impassioned keynote on the second day of the Year in Infrastructure conference, laying out a vision where artificial intelligence (AI) and open data ecosystems redefine the way the world builds and maintains infrastructure. Against the backdrop of Vancouver’s storied urban development, Cumins urged the industry to embrace technology and rethink strategies for a sustainable future, underscoring Bentley’s commitment to innovation over the past four decades.
Cumins began his address with a nod to science fiction author William Gibson, paraphrasing his famous quote: “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.” In this spirit, he framed the conference as a showcase of possibilities, celebrating groundbreaking projects that epitomize the role of technology in addressing the complexities of modern infrastructure.
“Vancouver, with its 10,000-year history of balancing the built and natural environment, stands as the perfect inspiration,” Cumins said. Drawing parallels between the city’s transformation since Expo 86 and Bentley Systems’ founding in 1984, Cumins noted how both entities have been fueled by forward-thinking approaches, setting the pace for global infrastructure progress.
The Evolution of Infrastructure: From CAD to AI
Tracing Bentley’s history, Cumins emphasized the company’s pivotal role in revolutionizing design through MicroStation, which democratized CAD (computer-aided design) software. As technology evolved from 2D to 3D modeling, Bentley empowered engineers to visualize projects realistically and address issues before construction commenced. Cumins highlighted Bentley’s innovations in 4D construction with Synchro and the company’s leap into digital twins, which create dynamic, continuously updated replicas of infrastructure assets.
The integration of AI is Bentley’s next frontier, Cumins asserted. AI-driven insights are already transforming asset operations, with predictive maintenance using machine learning to preempt costly failures. “We can now predict when road repairs are needed before traffic is disrupted,” he remarked, citing AI’s potential to improve outcomes in infrastructure design, operations, and sustainability.
Artificial intelligence, augmented reality, maximizing the value of Digital Twins, higher refresh rate on satellite data, and a new group of users: geospatial immigrants are among this week’s 2022 Industry Predictions. The industry needs to ensure two things for this category of users who don’t care if the data is geospatial or anything about it – firstly that users are getting the right data for their needs, and secondly that they are able to access it easily.
While Bentley Systems has had an Academic Program for some time, it has been reawakened, according to Katriona Lord-Levins, chief success officer at Bentley. “It has been brought into the times we’re in, and to meet the needs that we have to create a talent pipelines for our customers and ourselves,” said Lord-Levins. “Not only do we want to help students develop their engineering skills that will help them in the real world, but we also want to get people excited about the possibilities of the future.”
Digital twins can play a role providing accurate, reliable data – fit-for-purpose and useful across the water infrastructure lifecycle. Gregg Herrin, vice president, water infrastructure at Bentley Systems discussed the Dodge Data Analytics Water Report.in a briefing with GISCafe Voice.
“The report is about 30 pages long and does highlight the range of maturity that we see across water utilities,” said Herrin. “many are a lot farther along in their journey of going digital. We see a lot that emphasizes the different silos that exist within those utilities as well. Whether those are departmental silos of different parts of the organization, not interacting or not getting as much value as they could from each other, or data silos where the systems that are being used aren’t as connected as they could be, to provide the types of insight that could be shared.”
In the report, Herrin said throughout the report there is an emphasis on the fact that there are technical challenges, but then there also are people challenges. The challenges are primarily about getting departments to work together more closely. There are challenges even around, people aging out of their company. Aging infrastructure gets worse over time. Aging staff provide a whole different set of challenges, but also some opportunities. There is a need for utilities to be able to bring their technologies together in a way that’s more open and more flexible so that they can get the things that are more insightful across those different departmental silos.
Francois Valois, vice president, Civil Engineering with Bentley Systems spoke at Bentley’s recent Civil Design Virtual Press Briefing about the current state of civil engineering and how we now need to do things differently. Civil infrastructure will continue to need to accelerate, according to Valois. “There has been an enormous infrastructure deficit over the years. Any time we stop accelerating we make the problem worse. Now we have social distancing, and funding challenges. Projects may be funded by a special tax on gas, for example. In addition to this, we have to stay home and when we’re onsite we must have less people onsite and find new ways to work. Our answer is the digital twin, and helping our users to go digital.”
The year in review is defined in large part by what drives the technology sector. Natural phenomenon such as fires and floods, earthquakes and hurricanes require continual vigilance to be able to record, predict, respond to and recover from. The effort of Digital Cities is an effort to maintain cities in a more efficient manner, with heightened emphasis on people and data.
Keith Clarke, CBE, FREng, FICE, RIBA, Chairman, speaking on “Forum for the Future,” at the Bentley Year In Infrastructure 2019 thought leadership conference in Singapore in October, pointed out that recycling bins throughout the convention center have a sign above them stating, “the greatest threat to the planet is that we think somebody else will save it.”
Belgian company Orbit Geospatial Technologies (Orbit GT), specialists in 3D and mobile mapping, was recently acquired by Bentley Systems at the Bentley Year In Infrastructure 2019 thought leadership conference in Singapore.
Each year at the Bentley Year In Infrastructure thought leadership conference brings a new dimension to digital workflows. Digital Twins were definitely the order of the day this year, and mobile mapping and some other technologies taking front and center stage in the form of acquisitions.
Dr. Anne Kemp OBE, UK BIM Alliance Chair, Fellow and Technical Director at Atkins, has received the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for her contribution to the development of the UK’s smart digital economy.
email
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed
