Infrastructure

Digital Twin Technology Drives Nottingham's City Center Renewal

By Brooks Patrick

Like most urban centers, the city of Nottingham, England, has a rich history and strong cultural heritage, but it has been hampered for more than a decade by remnants of past retail and industrial patterns. The city’s Broadmarsh Centre shopping mall stood mostly vacant. Several former manufacturing sites needed to be cleaned up and repurposed. Train and bus transport hubs looked drab and required costly maintenance.

Nottingham City Council met these challenges with an ambitious revitalization plan that included new parks, office space, and housing. Nottingham planners created and shared their vision for what the city center could become, using a 3D digital twin built with ArcGIS Urban and other geographic information system (GIS) technology. The digital twin combines a 3D object model, real-world scans of buildings, and location-specific planning data to guide planning decisions.

This digital twin also helped the city secure £4 billion worth of investments and redevelopment bonds that are funding Nottingham’s transformation.

The train station has been renovated. A new bus station and parking garage now link pedestrians and cyclists with trains, trams, buses, and taxis. The city has a new central library and other public spaces. The Green Heart park now provides access to nature downtown with a pond, wetland plants, and a flowering meadow. The Island Quarter development includes 300 homes as well as housing for Nottingham University students. The Queens Road development will add 380 homes near the train station.

With all this development and new residents in the center of the city, Nottingham feels more vibrant. If all the plans become a reality, more than 7,000 new homes, 15,000 new jobs, and 2 million square feet of office and commercial floor space will further transform the city.

“When other developers see that investment, they want a piece of it,” said Mick Dunn, business development specialist, Geographical Information Services, Nottingham City Council. “That’s the beauty of pushing out the information in 3D. It’s a selling piece.”

Screenshot of Nottingham development plans
Nottingham City Council's digital twin helps everyone see what development is planned, what is approved, and what has been completed. (Screenshot courtesy of Nottingham City Council) [Click on the image to visit the interactive app]

Digging Beneath the Surface

Nottingham began using 3D modeling for city planning 20 years ago. The planning team also explored 3D technology to map the vast network of 850 underground caverns carved out of the sandstone beneath the city.

The caves played many pivotal roles in the city’s past, including helping Edward III sneak into Nottingham Castle in 1330 during a coup against his mother, and later providing shelter from bombing during World War II. The caves now serve as a tourist attraction, with an interactive map created by Nottingham City Council to guide exploration.

This map of the past helped the planners build their skills to map the future. By working to map the caves, the planning team gained proficiency in 3D and earned a reputation for app development. When planners received central government funding for city revitalization, they wanted to showcase how 3D technology could support advanced analysis.

Screenshot of Nottingham's 3D interactive cave map
Nottingham City Council's first public 3D navigation app acts as a guide for residents and tourists to explore the many underground caverns under the city that have a rich history. [Click on the image to visit the interactive app]

Nottingham’s digital twin now covers more than 73 square kilometers and depicts thousands of historic and modern buildings, open spaces, and infrastructure. It includes data about conservation areas, floodplains, and parks, as well as live feeds for traffic and street-level video from CCTV cameras. Planners rely on the digital twin to assess site context, see how traffic is behaving, and safeguard natural areas across the city.

“It’s gone from just a visualization tool to more of an analytical tool for design and metrics,” Dunn said.

Part of the Planning Process

Now, 3D modeling has become embedded in Nottingham’s workflows to assess the impact of development proposals. Planners drop a model of each proposed building into the digital twin to check visual impact, calculate site capacity, and negotiate height and floor space with the developer.

Paul Seddon, the director of planning and transport at Nottingham City Council, said in a press release that the digital twin has helped staff negotiate better design. “It gives confidence to both planning officers and applicants about the appropriateness of development and therefore the likelihood of planning approval being granted,” he said.

With the successful adoption of a 3D digital twin workflow, Nottingham City Council has achieved three key objectives: greater ease for people to engage in the planning process; increased transparency of decision-making; and a decrease in the amount of time it takes to move from application to formal decision.

This tech-driven, collaborative approach is helping make Nottingham more livable and resilient. The digital twin helps reenvision the city with input from residents, focusing on architecture and design. The plan prioritizes quality spaces that promote health, safety, and nature (see sidebar) while being welcoming to people of all ages.

The city that once thrived on manufacturing has been fostering connections to high-growth industries, such as clean energy providers and life sciences researchers. The digital twin provides the platform that city leaders need to promote the city’s advantages to potential employers.

Sharing the Value of 3D Across the UK

Nottingham City Council has been sharing its expertise about the value of 3D technology with other local authorities. The city has forged a tight connection to the University of Nottingham and other partners to test and understand the benefits of digital twin technology and discuss how to implement it effectively.

Recently, the 3D digital twin of Nottingham City won a Geography in Government 2024 award for innovation. The Nottingham planning team hopes that the recognition and the demonstrated value of digital twins will help make 3D planning the standard across the UK.

“The move to 3D geospatial technology is inevitable,” said Laura Pullen, GIS manager at Nottingham City Council. “We are creating a blueprint to support rapid deployment of similar capabilities across other local planning authorities.”

This blueprint comes at an opportune time in the UK as a national housing shortage has become a government priority. There’s a strong interest in speeding the time of building approvals to meet a deficit of 1.5 million homes across the country.

In March 2023, Nottingham secured a £375,000 government grant to further improve 3D technology and modernize the planning application process. Funds from the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government have enhanced the city’s 3D modeling process.

As part of the project, Nottingham planners helped the nearby city of Bradford adopt 3D planning workflows. A cost-benefit analysis assessed the value of this digital transformation and reported that the benefits outweighed the costs. This means that for every pound invested in digital twin technology, a local planning authority can expect to get back £2 in efficiency and money saved over a 10 year period.

The report concluded that the use of a digital twin led to faster, better decision-making and time savings for planners during the preliminary phase of a project. “The interest this has sparked across other local planning authorities has been amazing,” Dunn said. “Now we have a growing number of central government departments very interested in our approach and how this can be expanded to support operational and policy decisions relating to energy, transport and other urban considerations.”

 

Learn more about how GIS and digital twins support smart community planning. Review the video below for a walkthrough of the “City as Lab” entry that won the 2024 Geography in Government Award for innovation.

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