The winners of the 2024 Geographic Information Science and Technology Progress Awards have been announced. The project titled Key Technologies and Their Application of the Digital Twin Platform for Smart Cities, led by Associate Professor He Biao and Academician Guo Renzhong's team from the School of Architecture & Urban Planning at Shenzhen University (SZU), has been awarded the Grand Prize. This project, a collaboration with the Data Management Center of the Planning and Natural Resources Bureau of Shenzhen Municipality (Shenzhen Spatial Geographic Information Center), Shenzhen Qianhai Mega City Science and Technology Development Co., Ltd., and other partners, demonstrates exceptional advancements in geographic information technology.
The Geographic Information Science and Technology Progress Awards, established with approval from the Ministry of Science and Technology, is the highest scientific and technological honor in China's geographic information field. Evaluated by the China Association for Geospatial Industry and Sciences, the awards honor organizations and individuals for their significant contributions to geographic information science research, technological innovation and development, and the extensive application of scientific achievements.
The Key Technologies and Their Application of the Digital Twin Platform for Smart Cities project aims to address the increasing need for sophisticated and detailed urban management. Aiming to develop a digital twin platform for smart cities, the project has developed key technologies for efficient organization, dynamic scheduling, and real-time analysis and computation of massive amounts of multidimensional and complex city-level data. It has also tackled challenges such as managing high volumes of concurrent access and achieving highly realistic rendering.
The project introduces an engineering logic and technical framework for smart city construction, which centers on GIS and integrates 3D spatial domains. This framework provides comprehensive theoretical and technical guidance for platform development. To manage high volumes of concurrent user access, the project has developed a robust technical system for integrating, storing, indexing, and scheduling urban data. This system efficiently utilizes hardware resources across distributed, cloud-edge-end, and multi-GPU cluster environments. It has also pioneered techniques for organizational optimization and efficient indexing of complex 3D urban data, enabling efficient real-time scheduling of massive amounts of data. To achieve realistic and accurate simulation and rendering in a digital twin environment, the project has developed a 3D visualization architecture that integrates GIS with physical rendering. By incorporating material augmentation and enhanced lighting models, this architecture delivers high-performance, lifelike 3D rendering of fully integrated spatial environments. Additionally, a digital twin platform for smart cities has been developed, which seamlessly integrates virtual and real elements with dynamic mapping and entity association. This platform offers an efficient spatiotemporal operating system for smart city construction.
The research results have been implemented in engineering applications on the Shenzhen Visualized Urban Spatial Digital Platform, which was launched at the end of 2020 as the sole authoritative smart city infrastructure platform in Shenzhen. This platform has been operationally deployed across many departments within the Shenzhen Municipal Government and district governments. This engineering logic and technical framework for smart city construction offers valuable insights and a clear roadmap for building smart cities while underscoring the pivotal role of GIS in this endeavor. This approach is gaining widespread industry acceptance. The project's achievements and applications have been featured in reports by major media outlets, including CCTV.
The project's achievements have been applied across various fields in cities such as Shanghai, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Guangzhou, Xi'an, and Jiaxing. These fields include digital twins for high-speed rail, digital cultural tourism, digital logistics, and natural resource asset management. The achievements have received extensive attention from the surveying and geographic information industries, as well asfromthe smart city construction sector. This recognition has led to significant social benefits and has further advanced the integration of GIS technology in the digital transformation of various industries.
