Vancouver Airport Authority (YVR) has launched its digital twin to transform how the airport serves its employees, passengers and the local community.
The first major achievement of YVR’s Innovation Hub, the digital twin provides a virtual interactive representation of YVR’s terminal and airfield on Sea Island, Musqueam, to be used for training, optimisation, future planning, simulation, testing and more by presenting historical and real-time data gathered by sensors as either a 2D or 3D visualisation, enabling data-driven decision-making and collaboration that has never been available before. The platform was designed as a people-first technology, making its value limitless for YVR’s frontline workers, designers and stakeholders.
YVR will leverage the digital twin to not only improve passenger experience and logistics, but also lead innovation outside of aviation, making YVR more than an airport by way of becoming the region’s ‘gateway to the new economy’. It will also be used to model aircraft movements and activity on the airfield to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as part of YVR’s initiative to become the world’s greenest airport. And it will aid efforts to digitise the airport’s indigenous art collection in response to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the Truth and Reconciliation call to action number 92 – Business and Reconciliation
YVR’s digital twin technology was developed in collaboration with Unity, the world’s leading platform for creating and operating real-time 3D (RT3D) content, as well as Vancouver-based GeoSim Cities, experts in large-scale precision 3D modelling, and Thynkli, a local company providing expertise in digital business transformation.
