“Connected Highway” Demonstrator Shows How Easy It Can Be to Federate IoT Data in Infrastructure Digital Twins

The concept of digital twins is finding new applications in the way that we interact with our critical infrastructure like roads and highways, improving reliability and safety, increasing the movement of people and goods, and creating better value. This article details how a team from Bentley Systems and Microsoft federated civil engineering data with Internet of Things (IoT) data to create a “connected highway.” By integrating Bentley’s iTwin Platform and Microsoft’s Azure Digital Twins, the team combined real-time data from air quality and traffic monitoring devices with civil engineering models, maps, and terrain data to create a living digital twin. This digital twin enables real-time monitoring of critical infrastructure for safety hazards and traffic incidents. As no single vendor of digital twins can possibly address all the use cases, or foresee how those use cases will evolve over the next five years, it is important for developers to design their applications with flexibility in mind. In software terms, that means open.