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Link with CSMP - Designing Cities of the Future

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Link with CSMP - Designing Cities of the Future

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Simulation software that can create accurate "digital twins" of entire cities is enabling planners, designers and engineers to improve their designs and measure the effect changes will have on the lives of citizens.

Cities are hugely complex and dynamic creations. They live and breathe.

Think about all the parts: millions of people, schools, offices, shops, parks, utilities, hospitals, homes and transport systems.

Changing one aspect affects many others. Which is why planning is such a hard job.

So imagine having a tool at your disposal that could answer questions such as "What will happen to pedestrian and traffic flow if we put the new metro station here?" or "How can we persuade more people to leave their cars at home when they go to work?"

This is where 3D simulation software is coming into its own.

Architects, engineers, construction companies and city planners have long used computer-aided design and building information modelling software to help them create, plan and construct their projects.

But with the addition of internet of things (IoT) sensors, big data and cloud computing, they can now create "digital twins" of entire cities and simulate how things will look and behave in a wide range of scenarios.

"A digital twin is a virtual representation of physical buildings and assets but connected to all the data and information around those assets, so that machine learning and AI algorithms can be applied to them to help them operate more efficiently," explains Michael Jansen, chief executive of Cityzenith, the firm behind the Smart World Pro simulation platform.

Take Singapore as an example.

This island state, sitting at the foot of the Malaysian peninsula with a population of six million people, has developed a virtual digital twin of the entire city using software developed by French firm Dassault Systemes.

"Virtual Singapore is a 3D digital twin of Singapore built on topographical as well as real-time, dynamic data," explains George Loh, progammes director for the city's National Research Foundation (NRF), a department within the prime minister's office.

"It will be the country's authoritative platform that can be used by urban planners to simulate the testing of innovative solutions in a virtual environment."

In addition to the usual map and terrain data, the platform incorporates real-time traffic, demographic and climate information, says Mr Loh, giving planners the ability to engage in "virtual experimentation".

"For example, we can plan barrier-free routes for disabled and elderly people," he says.

Bernard Charles, Dassault Systemes' chief executive, says the addition of real-time data from multiple sources facilitates joined-up, holistic thinking.

"The problem is that when we decide about the evolution of a city we are in some way blind. You have the urban view of it - a map - you decide to put a building here, but another agency has to think about transport, another agency has to think about commercial use and flats for people.

"The creation of one thing changes so many other things - the flow and life of citizens."

The firm's 3DExperience platform gives planners and designers "a global overview" they've never had before, explains Mr Charles.

Dassault's software, which incorporates calculations that simulate the flow of a fluid, is used to design most F1 cars and aeroplanes, says Mr Charles, and this capability is useful for understanding wind flow around buildings, through streets and green spaces.

"If some parts of a city are too windy and cold, no-one will like to go there," he says.

Tracking people's movements through a city using anonymised mobile phone and transport GPS data can help authorities spot bottlenecks and heat maps as the day progresses, hopefully leading to smarter, more integrated transport and traffic management systems.

"You can look at all 'what if' scenarios, so if we ask the right question we can change the city, the world," concludes Mr Charles.

In the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, a brand new $6.5bn "smart city" called Amaravati has been planned since 2015, but has been mired in controversy amid disagreements over the designs and criticism of its environmental impact.

But last year Foster + Partners, the global architecture and engineering firm, and Surbana Jurong, the Asian urban and infrastructure consultancy, were chosen to take on the huge task.

And Chicago-based Cityzenith is providing the single "command and control" digital platform for the entire project.

IoT sensors will monitor construction progress in real time, says Mr Jansen, and the software will integrate all the designs from the 30 or so design consultants already involved in the first phase of the project.

"The portal will simulate the impact of these proposed buildings before anyone even breaks ground," he says, "and these simulations will adjust to real-time changes."

The platform can incorporate more than a thousand datasets, says Mr Jansen, and integrate all the various design and planning tools the designers and contractors use.

The city, which will eventually be home to 3.5 million people, will be hot and humid, experiencing temperatures approaching 50C at times, so simulating how buildings will cope with the climate will be crucial, says Mr Jansen.
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One large Norwegian engineering consultancy, Norconsult, is even combining simulation software with gaming to help improve its designs.

When working on a large rail tunnel project in Norway, the firm developed a virtual reality game to involve train drivers in the design of the signalling system. The drivers operated a virtual train and "drove" it through the tunnel, flagging up any issues with the proposed position of the signals.

"They could change weather conditions, the speed and so on," says Thomas Angeltveit, who worked on the project. "It feels real, so it is much easier for them to interact."

"We had a lot of comments, so we were able to change the design and make a lot of adjustments."

Changing the design before construction begins obviously saves money in the long-term.

Digital twin simulation software is a fast-growing business, with firms such as Siemens, Microsoft and GE joining Dassault Systemes and Cityzenith as lead practitioners.

Research firm Gartner predicts that by 2021 half of large industrial companies will use digital twins and estimates that those that do could save up to 25% in operational running costs as a result.

The future of design is virtual and driven by data it seems.

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Simulation software that can create accurate "digital twins" of entire cities is enabling planners, designers and engineers to improve their designs and measure the effect changes will have on the lives of citizens. Cities are hugely complex and dynamic creations. They live and breathe.

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A diet has been developed that promises to save lives, feed 10 billion people and all without causing catastrophic damage to the planet.

Scientists have been trying to figure out how we are going to feed billions more people in the decades to come.

Their answer - "the planetary health diet" - does not completely banish meat and dairy.

But it requires a ginormous shift in what we pile onto our plates and turning to foods that we barely eat.

What changes am I going to have to make?

If you eat meat every day then this is the first biggie. For red meat you're looking at a burger a week or a large steak a month and that's your lot.

You can still have a couple of portions of fish and the same of chicken a week, but plants are where the rest of your protein will need to come from.

The researchers are recommending nuts and a good helping of legumes (that's beans, chickpeas and lentils) every day instead.

There's also a major push on all fruit and veg, which should be make up half of every plate of food we eat.

Although there's a cull on "starchy vegetables" such as the humble potato or cassava which is widely eaten in Africa.

So what is the diet in detail?

If you served it all up this is what you are allowed each day:

1. Nuts - 50g a day

2. Beans, chickpeas, lentils and other legumes - 75g a day

3. Fish - 28g a day

4. Eggs - 13g a day (so one and a bit a week)

5. Meat - 14g a day of red meat and 29g a day of chicken

6. Carbs - whole grains like bread and rice 232g a day and 50g a day of starchy vegetables

7. Dairy - 250g - the equivalent of one glass of milk

8. Vegetables (300g) and fruit (200g)

The diet has room for 31g of sugar and about 50g worth of oils like olive oil.

Will it taste awful?

Prof Walter Willet, one of the researchers who is based at Harvard, said no and that after a childhood on a farm eating three portions of red meat a day he was now pretty much in line with the planetary health diet.

He said: "There's tremendous variety there.

"You can take those foods and put them together in thousands of different ways. We're not talking about a deprivation diet here, it is healthy eating that is flexible and enjoyable."

Is this for real life, or is this just fantasy?

This plan requires changes to diets in pretty much every corner of the world.

Europe and North America need to cut back massively on red meat, East Asia needs to cut back on fish, Africa on starchy vegetables.

"Humanity has never attempted to change the food system at this scale and this speed," says Line Gordon, an assistant professor at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

"Whether it's a fantasy or not, a fantasy doesn't have to bad... it's time to dream of a good world," she says.

Taxes on red meat are one of the many options the researchers say may be necessary to persuade us to switch diets.

Who came up with this?

A group of 37 scientists from around the world were brought together as part of the EAT-Lancet commission.

They're a mix of experts from farming to climate change to nutrition and they took two years to come up with their findings which have been published in the Lancet.

Why do we need a diet for 10 billion people?

The world population reached 7 billion in 2011 and it's now around 7.7 billion.

That figure is expected to reach 10 billion around 2050 and will keep on climbing.

Will it save lives?

The researchers say the diet will prevent around 11 million people dying each year.

That number is largely down to cutting diseases related to unhealthy diets such as heart attacks, strokes and some cancers.

These are now the biggest killers in developed countries.

How bad is farming for the planet?

The use of land for growing food and forestry accounts for around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, about the same as from electricity and heating, and substantially more than from all the trains, planes and automobiles on the planet.

When you look more closely at the food sector's environmental impact, you can see that meat and dairy are the major factors - worldwide, livestock accounts for between 14.5 and 18% of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.

When it comes to other warming gases, agriculture is one of the leading contributors to both methane and nitrous oxide emissions.

Agriculture is also a significant source of air pollution with ammonia from farms a major cause of fine particulate matter, which the WHO says is a threat to health worldwide.

Similarly when it comes to water, agriculture and food productions are one of the biggest threats, consuming 70% of global freshwater sources for irrigation.

So will the planetary health diet save the planet?

The researchers aim was to feed more people while:

minimising greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change

preventing any species going extinct

have no expansion of farmland

and preserve water

However, just changing diets is nowhere near enough.

In order to make the numbers add up, it also requires a halving of food waste and to increase the amount of food produced on current farmland.

Why isn't meat being banned?

"If we were just minimising greenhouse gases we'd say everyone be vegan," said Prof Willet.

However, he said it was unclear whether a vegan diet was the healthiest option.

So what happens now?

The EAT-Lancet Commission is going to take their findings to governments around the world and bodies such as the World Health Organization to see if they can begin to change the way we eat.

Follow James on Twitter

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The diet to save lives, the planet and feed us all?

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A diet has been developed that promises to save lives, feed 10 billion people and all without causing catastrophic damage to the planet. Scientists have been trying to figure out how we are going to feed billions more people in the decades to come.

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t is a warm day and the European Commission building, on leafy Smith Square a few streets away from the Houses of Parliament, has laid on a buffet. There will be sandwiches. There will be roasted chicken legs. Whether anybody will have an appetite for it after the event it is to follow is another matter entirely; perhaps they'll decide to fill their pockets in an attempt to stock up for possible shortages to come. A panel of the learned, the well-read and the frankly terrified has gathered here to discuss the likely impact of Brexit on Britain's food sector, and it is not a jolly event.

Julie Girling, Conservative MEP for south-west England and Gibraltar and a specialist in European food systems, tells us she is normally a sunny, optimistic soul. Not today. "There is very little good news coming out of Brexit," she says, bleakly. "It's a tragedy that we have no certainty." Nick von Westenholz from the National Farmers Union (NFU), many of whose members voted out, takes us through various trading scenarios - customs tariffs going up, down or disappearing altogether - all of which impact the farming sector's finances in complex ways and therefore its ability to produce more, which we may well need to do post-Brexit to keep ourselves fed.

Sue Davies from Which?, the Consumers' Association, agonises over what a deal with the United States would mean. They have studied public opinion. "Eighty per cent of people are uncomfortable with beef raised with growth hormones; 73% don't want chlorinated chicken." And yet, increasingly, that's what is on the agenda, along with the possibility of meat imports from Australia currently banned by the EU, also because of their use of growth hormones. Girling sums up: "It's time the food industry stood up and said Brexit is a disaster."

I told Gove he was driving the country into a food security crisis. He looked incredulous

Professor Tim Lang

At the end of September, it will be six months until we officially leave the European Union. Those who support Brexit obviously see it as the start of a bright new tomorrow for Britain. The dire predictions at that seminar would quickly be dismissed as alarmism. After all, it was held in the London headquarters of the European Commission. It was hardly likely to be a cheerleading session. As with many of the keen Brexiteers' positions, it may be short on facts, but it is certainly an opposing view.

Nevertheless, for many experts in the British food industry, among them the farmers, producers and retailers upon whom we depend, Brexit is increasingly seen as a potential calamity with which the British government has failed to engage. It is one which brings with it the likelihood of disruption to our food supply, including unharvested produce and empty supermarket shelves; it is the symptom of Brexit which is likely to have the quickest and most direct impact on the British populace.

On 10 July, the Sun reported that ministers were drawing up secret plans to stockpile processed foods, in case the talks collapsed. When challenged on the story a few days later, the new Brexit secretary Dominic Raab described it as a "selective snippet" but refused to deny it. (CRU, a firm offering analysis of the global metals business, announced it was a huge opportunity for the tinplate market because of the interest in canned foods that would follow.) The stockpiling story was quickly followed by a news report that the army was on standby to get vital supplies to the right places, and an announcement by the NFU that in the event of a no-deal Brexit stopping imports, Britain would run out of food in August 2019.

'CRU, a firm offering analysis of the global metals business, announced Brexit was a huge opportunity for the tinplate market because of the interest in canned goods that would follow.' Photograph: Romas Foord/The Observer

Of course, none of it has happened yet. As the long hot summer of 2018 rolled on, with ministerial resignations, accusations on all sides of unhelpful hyperbole about "cliff edge" and "no-deal Brexits", the situation has been as clear as the proverbial mud. At the time of writing we genuinely do not know what is going to happen on 29 March 2019. For a journalist with a long deadline trying to assess the situation, it's like plaiting sand.

But that's only if you view Brexit as a single event which is going to happen on a Friday, six months hence. In terms of Britain's food-supply chain, it isn't. Brexit's impact is already being felt. Food producers are large-scale businesses that have to make investment decisions years ahead. And faced by the uncertainty of Brexit that's exactly what they're doing.

PD Hook in Oxfordshire is one of Britain's largest poultry producers, bringing 900,000 chickens to market a week, for everything from budget ranges to premium brands. "We've been expanding by 3-5% every year for the past 30 years," managing director James Hook tells me. "Because of Brexit we're holding our volume as it is for this year and next year. Basically, we've reduced our capital expenditure by half until we know what's happening." In real terms, he says, this means the company is "going backwards". But he sees it as the smart decision.

"If we have a hard, cliff-edge Brexit, then we might have to make trade deals that result in cheap chicken coming in from the US. We might have cheaper product coming from Thailand and Brazil, and that would mean a price drop across the market." He has other pressing concerns, especially around workforce. Although we have had a commitment from the British government that EU nationals already working here can stay, there has not yet been clarity on a registration system. Hook's business is dependent on eastern European labour and right now, he says, he has double the number of vacancies he is used to.

Ali Capper who runs Stocks Farm, a producer of fruit and hops in Worcestershire, tells a similar story. "When you're running a business like ours you're making investment decision five or 10 years ahead." They had been thinking about replenishing their orchards with new saplings. "These trees come from Belgium and Holland, but we don't know whether they would come to us with tariffs or not," Capper says. "And whether they'd be delayed at the border." So, for now, they've halted investment.

"But the biggest crisis is where the people are going to come from to grow, pick and pack," Capper continues. The issue is not entirely caused by Brexit. Expansion of many eastern European economies means people in, say, Poland are now staying home and finding jobs there. However, many food producers report people from other countries being put off the UK by a fall in the pound due to the Brexit vote, and uncertainty over their status. As one person put it to me, "They have doubts as to whether they are even welcome here post the vote." Forty per cent of migrant labour from the EU into Britain is involved in food manufacture. (Nine days ago, environment secretary Michael Gove announced an agricultural-worker visa pilot scheme, to commence in spring 2019. While the idea was welcomed by the industry, the number of visas - just 2,500, or 4% of the work force - was dismissed as feeble.)

'Disruption to our food supply is the symptom of Brexit which is likely to have the quickest and most direct impact on the British populace.' Photograph: Romas Foord/The Observer

Companies such as Tilda are simply moving production. Thirty per cent of the rice it processes at its UK sites is bound for other countries in the EU. "We know what leaving the customs union will look like," says Jon Calland, head of external affairs for Tilda. "It means the UK will get third-country status." That could bring with it large tariffs. Products like rice, which are only processed in the UK rather than grown here, will fall foul of exceptionally complex "rules of origin". These govern the degree to which a foodstuff can have an input from outside the EU before it incurs a higher cost.

"You talk to the UK government about rules of origin and they simply haven't got a clue," says Calland. The consumer doesn't need to understand them either, he says; all we need to know is that Tilda has decided to move a third of the business - a third of the turnover, a third of the jobs - out of the UK and into another EU country. "And with it will go the tax we could be paying to the UK exchequer."

It is a story which, anecdotally, appears to be repeated across the food sector: halted investment, shifted production, uncertainty. It indicates a shrinking of the food economy is under way. It also means Britain's food production is going to stall and even go into reverse at the exact moment it needs to go up. Only 49% of the food we consume in this country is now produced here. Another 30% comes directly from the EU. That's 10,000 shipping containers a day. Another 11% of the food we consume arrives under EU deals with third countries outside the EU; 70% of the cropland required to grow our food is located abroad.

People with knowledge of discussions within government told me about leading figures in the food industry going to see Theresa May to plead their case. "She just stonewalled them," one told me. Angus Davison of fruit company Haygrove summed up the views of many people across the food industry when he said of the prime minister, "She's not interested in us and not listening to us. She's an intelligent person, so I presume she doesn't care and is prepared to sacrifice the industry."

Then, on 6 July, came a chink of light: the Chequers agreement and the white paper that followed six days later. It included a reference to the desire for the continued free flow of food and agricultural goods between Britain and the EU, on the same terms as now. Perhaps May had been listening after all. If so, it made little difference. First David Davis resigned as Brexit secretary, announcing this was a deal he couldn't sell. He was followed by Boris Johnson's resignation as foreign secretary.

Sources within the EU indicated that the white paper was an attempt to cherry-pick the best of EU membership without the rest of the contract, including free movement of labour, and therefore wouldn't be acceptable. A no-deal Brexit came back on to the agenda. Stories filled the press about likely shortages of quality cheeses and dairy in general, accompanied by massive price rises, because the UK does not produce enough milk for its needs.

On 23 July, the Centre for Food Policy, based at City, University of London, published a briefing paper authored by leading academics including Tim Lang, professor of food policy. It was called "Feeding Britain: Food Security after Brexit". It made for sobering reading. We no longer had food reserves, it said, and were dependent on technology and frictionless trade for our full supermarket shelves. "A food system engineered on a three-to-five-day 'just in time' logistics and delivery system has the potential to break down in less than a week," it said.

It's a theme echoed by Richard Burnett of the Road Haulage Association. "It's a really serious situation and it feels like it's getting worse. If we end up with no deal, what does that mean for the supply chain?" Various logistics experts have pointed out that an extra two minutes of checks per truck would result in a 17-mile tailback within a day, for both importers and exporters on both sides of the channel. "The thing is, checks on non-EU trucks don't take a couple of minutes," Burnett told me. "They can take two or three hours." Post-Brexit, British trucks would be non-EU. A team from London's Imperial College subsequently estimated those queues could be 29 miles long at peak times on the British side, and there's no reason to suppose it wouldn't be the same on the French. And time that food spends at the docks is time off its shelf-life, and an increase in cost.

What's more, Britain is in no state to fill the hunger gap if there are delays to getting food in. "To alter this could take years, possibly decades," the Centre for Food Policy report says. In August, the University of Hertfordshire announced it had received a £400,000 research grant to investigate maximising quality food production post-Brexit, but it would indeed take years for this relatively small research project to have an impact on our food supply. This has been portrayed by Brexiteers as a massive opportunity for British farming. There would be huge demand. But as von Westenholz of the NFU explained to me, entirely British farming is not as common as many assume: "Many forms of farming depend on inputs from abroad, like animal feed or saplings." Farming is a complex international web.

Elsewhere in the report, they examine the keen Brexiteer's notion that the way forward would be a big deal with the US. Wilbur Ross, the US commerce secretary, has already made it clear that such a deal would only happen if the UK removed the objections to the use of growth hormones in the raising of beef and the chlorine washing of chicken. Both of these are prohibited under EU food law. As the EU withdrawal bill simply writes EU law over into UK law, they will be illegal here too after Brexit unless we later decide otherwise. But the key issue, according to the report, is scale. The US is currently only the 10th largest exporter of food to the UK. "For the USA to replace the combined food imports from the other nine in the top 10 would require a vast food flotilla and logistics operation exceeding that of the 1940-45 Atlantic convoys."

Checks on non-EU trucks don't take a couple of minutes. They can take two or three hours

Richard Burnett, Road Haulage Association

That said, the language of the report is practically staid compared to that used by Lang when we talk shortly after its publication. "This is the biggest challenge Britain has faced since the early 1940s," he says. "A hard Brexit would be an unprecedented event in modern food history." He describes a face-to-face meeting with Gove. "I told him he was driving the country into a food security crisis. He looked incredulous."

But surely the government wouldn't let that happen? Lang told me he had it on good authority from a senior adviser to a senior minister that currently the best notion the government had for dealing with a hard Brexit was to abandon all checks and regulation of food coming into the UK, with huge ramifications for both quality and safety. "That's not taking back control. It's abandoning it." And none of this even begins to get into the details of the free flow of food and agricultural goods across the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Late last month, the government set out to cast a little light on this, when they released a series of " technical notices" on what would happen in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Announcing them, Brexit secretary Dominic Raab portrayed them as evidence of plans for an orderly, well-managed departure from the EU. The small print told a different story. Any business wanting to import from the EUwould be mired in bureaucracy as they acquired third-country status. As the government itself said, "Engaging a customs broker or acquiring the appropriate software and authorisations from HMRC will come at a cost." As Andrew Opie of the British Retail Consortium, which represents all the major supermarkets, says, "Increased bureaucracy and checks at the EU border will completely clog up key ports such as Calais, having a major knock-on effect in delays and disruption to imports to the UK, shortening shelf life and increasing prices." Further technical notices with ramifications for the food industry are still due to be published.

'For many experts in the British food industry, Brexit is increasingly seen as a potential calamity.' Photograph: Romas Foord/The Observer

One morning, as dawn is breaking, I head to New Covent Garden market in London's Vauxhall, just south of the Thames. Here, in these warehouses with their truck bays and crates piled high, is the reality of these trade negotiations. Here are crates of glorious flat-leaf parsley from Italy and melons from Spain. There are lettuces and tomatoes and cucumbers from the Netherlands and brassicas from all over Poland. Before the city has even woken up, fork-lifts are loading product into an endless stream of trucks. Of all the fruit and veg eaten outside the home in London, 40% comes from here. And it all started over there.

Gary Marshall runs Bevington Salads and is chairman of the tenants' association at the market. He despairs of the politicians. "If we were as unprofessional and undignified and incompetent as them we'd be out of a job," he says. He voted out, like many of the traders here, though he admits it's a mess. I ask him what he thinks will happen. After all, this place depends on frictionless trade from Europe. He says it's down to pounds and pence. "We buy more from them than they buy from us," he says. "They'll want to trade with us. Some sort of deal will be done."

It's the closest to a genuinely optimist view that I come across, even if it's thin on detail. I walk through the market, between crates of top-quality produce, the likes of which our grandparents' generation could only dream of; part of the bounty that European Union membership gifted us. We can only hope Marshall's right. Our continued access to the global pantry come 29 March 2019 depends upon it.

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Food and Brexit: will our cupboards be bare?

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t is a warm day and the European Commission building, on leafy Smith Square a few streets away from the Houses of Parliament, has laid on a buffet. There will be sandwiches. There will be roasted chicken legs.