Bentley Systems, a US software company, has acquired Stockholm-based Agency9 to enhance its digital twin services for urban planning
Agency9 works with larger municipalities with city-scale digital twin cloud services for city planning and related web-based 3D visualisation.
Agency9 has taken advantage of reality meshes created by Bentley?s ContextCapture reality modelling software as the digital context for visualising urban infrastructure assets represented in GIS data, terrain surveys, and BIM models.
Bentley?s new iTwin? cloud services, introduced at the Year in Infrastructure Conference in London, add digital alignment and change synchronisation for infrastructure engineering digital twins and will enable OpenCities Planner (formerly Agency9 CityPlanner)to uniquely serve urban planning requirements at fuller levels of detail.
Phil Christensen, Bentley?s senior vice-president, reality modelling, said, ?Our many city users globally have been asking for the useful capabilities which Agency9 has successfully implemented throughout Sweden, to take further advantage of their reality modelling programs.?
He added, ?When we combine Bentley ContextCapture?s 3D surveying advancements (based on hybrid aerial, UAV, and ground-based imagery) with our Connected Data Environment (CDE) technologies for geospatial-to-BIM integration, we make city-scale digital twins as a cloud service broadly accessible.?
?Ultimately, synchronising reality and ?virtuality,? OpenCities Planner offers the perfect web solution to enable every city in going digital,? Christensen concluded.
H?kan Engman, CEO of Agency9, commented, ?Now that we?re part of Bentley, we?re confident about achieving the full global potential of Agency9?s innovations. As contributors toward unique city-scale digital twin cloud services from Bentley, we can foresee the realisation of our users? vision to advance from urban planning to improve cities? asset performance.?
