Evolution 4.0: Beyond the digital twin

In November 2020, the World Economic Forum named spatial computing in its top 10 list of emerging technologies. So what is it? 

Imagine for a second, though it’s not a pleasant exercise, that a serious incident is unfolding in the downtown district of your local city. Innocent people have been injured, while the real potential exists for more casualties. Time is of the essence. The sooner first responders can be on the scene, the lesser the risk of events escalating. For the afflicted, the prospect of escaping life changing injuries directly correlates with the speed at which they can be transported to a medical facility. Once there, getting them through the hectic warren of corridors and into the sure hands of surgeons and nurses is an undertaking of no lesser urgency.

Now imagine that the entire downtown district is fully responsive to such a state of emergency. Highways and byways can be closed, with all public traffic diverted, creating a clear run for the blue light services. And what if the city’s strategically vital buildings, including its hospitals, are equally intuitive? Those crowded ER corridors can be cleared, ensuring patient and doctor alike are unobstructed en route to where they are needed. Crucially, these processes are all driven by machine learning, entirely uninterrupted by human intervention. To the uninformed observer, they would seem to happen as if by an invisible hand. That is the full promise of spatial computing.

It may seem a fanciful vision, but it relies on hard- and software already widely in use. Bluetooth, 5G, the Internet of Things, augmented and virtual reality, and big data accessible via the cloud underpin the spatial computing concept. As with so much of the fourth industrial era, what is required is a revolution in our collective mindset; the technology is, by and large, in place.

I have written previously here about digital twins and how their development in the 1960’s and 70’s helped to put man on the moon. Digital twins create a virtual simulation of a real-world asset, allowing the owner to scenario-plan for the purpose of performance analysis. Want to know how quickly three hundred shoppers and staff can be evacuated from your mall in case of emergency? Run the scenario through the digital twin and find out. Crucially, it will then be up to you how you apply what you have learned. With spatial computing, we have the potential to go further. The algorithm is constantly wargaming, diagnosing problems as they occur and taking real time remedial action. What’s more, all the necessary information about how the space around us is changing can be relayed directly to those of us who need to know.  

The ability to monitor the flow of traffic – human and vehicular – and optimise the surrounding ecosystem accordingly promises manifold benefits for buildings, neighbourhoods and entire cities. As national vaccination programmes gather momentum across the world, employers and employees have begun to think about how a phased return to the workplace might unfold. The potential for spatial computing to risk-assure offices under these conditions hardly needs explaining.

Successful implementation would require every object in a given space to be equipped with locational and sensor technology, so as to harvest data and relay findings to the cloud. The benefits of such a reality scale right down to the mere trivialities of life. Never again lose your keys, or find yourself frantically, vainly searching for a pen; never again walk to the elevator, only to find that it is out of service.

But the perennial question of where we draw the line between tech that is intuitive and tech that is invasive becomes still more pressing in this near-future reality. A globally accepted standard on data, covering collection, application, retention and myriad other concerns cannot be regarded as only a nice-to-have. It is an essential. Certainly, wherever these data issues intersect with real estate, organisations such as RICS will have a key role to play.

Back in November, WBEF hosted a webinar on autonomous vehicles. During the session it was noted that, in terms of getting driverless cars onto our roads, the regulatory policy has proved far more difficult to perfect than the technology. The same is true here. Should we manage it, our reward will be the perfect choreography of all those devices that already make our lives easier and more productive. That, I’m sure you will agree, is a prize worth striving for.