The city of Las Vegas unveiled the first stage of its own digital twin during this month’s Consumer Electronics Showcase (CES). The Cityzenith project should help the city’s building owners transition to net-zero carbon emissions.

The Las Vegas digital-twin project encompasses a seven square kilometre area of downtown Las Vegas and will leverage the city’s 5G networking and IoT sensor network to power analytics that transform mobility, air quality, noise pollution, water management and, in particular, emissions from major buildings across the city.

The project is developing fast; the base twin is completed and, soon, stakeholders from across Las Vegas will be invited to join the project, including real estate owners, government agencies, university researchers, data partners, architects and casino operators.

Chicago-based Cityzenith is providing the project’s digital-twin technology as part of its Clean Cities – Clean Future initiative to implement its SmartWorld digital-twin platform in major world cities, a programme designed to help drive down urban emissions and improve cost efficiencies for local building owners.

Project partner Terbine brings together and contextualises IoT data from local government agencies, building operators, transportation systems, vehicle manufacturers and more, to provide the high volumes of sensor information needed by the urban digital twin.

“Transitioning our home city into a clean, sustainable, and more attractive place to live and visit is a fantastic opportunity, and we’re delighted with our progress so far on this project,” said Terbine CEO David Knight. “What we’re building here represents a model for how other cities can enable sustainability and a better quality of life for their citizens.”

SmartWorld manages and reports emissions performance and analytics across assets in real time to ensure on-going operational metrics and compliance goals are maintained.

Cityzenith CEO a Michael Jansen said: “We are honoured to be working with the city of Las Vegas, providing the market’s only end-to-end decarbonisation solution for buildings in cities, to ensure Las Vegas’ buildings achieve net-zero emissions in the years to come quickly or without risk.”

Cityzenith will soon unveil two other major projects in the USA, net-zero digital twins for Los Angeles and Phoenix, with a dozen city net-zero digital twins to follow soon.

Cityzenith is based in Chicago with offices in London and New Delhi. The company’s SmartWorld OS digital twin platform was created for anyone designing, constructing and managing complex, large-scale building projects, properties, and real-estate portfolios. It has grown to cover infrastructure, energy projects, transport, health, people movements and whole cities.

Terbine is a global-scale system for the seamless exchanging of IoT data, which characterises, categorises, licenses, regulates, tracks, monetises and securitises the flow of machine-generated data emanating from public agencies, academic institutions and commercial entities. Designed to leverage continuing advances in artificial intelligence, 5G and edge computing, Terbine can scale with the growth in IoT data generation and solidify its usage within and between industries, to benefit global commerce and society at large.