The annual event highlighted AI’s potential to meet existing and future infrastructure needs around the world.
The infrastructure sector is seeing increasing demand and data—but a critical shortage of skilled engineers to meet that demand, and a lack of insights derived from that data. Fortunately, a transformative new tool exists that could bridge those gaps: artificial intelligence (AI).
That was the key takeaway from of Bentley Systems’ Year in Infrastructure 2024, the annual conference from the software developer focused on infrastructure design, construction and operations.
“AI is a new paradigm shift, transforming every industry, and infrastructure is no exception,” said Nicholas Cumins, CEO of Bentley Systems, in his keynote address at Year in Infrastructure, which took place in October in Vancouver, Canada.
If you missed the conference, here’s a recap of Bentley’s views on AI and other infrastructure engineering trends.
How AI can impact infrastructure
“Just imagine the sheer scale of data that is created in the design, the construction and the operations phase,” Cumins said. “It makes infrastructure a prime area where AI can have the greatest impact.”
AI-driven insights can enable infrastructure asset operators to predict when maintenance is needed before failures occur. AI can analyze digital twins of infrastructure assets such as bridges, energy transmission networks, roads and dams. It can identify issues and recommend preventative action, avoiding breakdowns and safety actions, and even reduce their carbon footprint.
But there’s a caveat, according to Cumins. “The reality is, that in order to take advantage of AI and all the innovations, you need to get control of your data,” he said. Bentley believes it has the offerings that will enable infrastructure stakeholders to make the most out of this emerging technology.
Advancements in digital twin technology
Bentley anticipates that digital twins will be crucial for AI to enable smarter and more connected infrastructure. To that end, the developer has enhanced its iTwin platform with new features to integrate real-time data and improve communications between design models and operational data. They believe this will enable infrastructure professionals to better predict performance, optimize maintenance schedules, and make their asset management strategies more robust.
At Year in Infrastructure 2024, Bentley demonstrated how AI could be integrated into a digital twin through its new product, OpenSite+. A Bentley executive used the software’s generative AI copilot to design a hotel, validate the design, check the geospatial context of where the hotel was to be located, and make real-time changes to the design—all by simply talking to it. OpenSite+ also uses AI to automate the drawing process for a project.
Bentley also says it has enhanced its MicroStation 2024 software to help designers create digital twins as a natural part of their design work, through features including Python scripting support, integrating GIS data into the design, and enabling real-time collaboration on digital twins.
Bentley has also been working on incorporating 3D geospatial data into its digital twin platform. The company recently acquired Cesium, a 3D geospatial platform company whose 3D Tiles standard has been adopted as the Open Geospatial Consortium community standard. The combination of iTwin and Cesium technologies enable an infrastructure asset owner to, for example, collect drone photos, build a reality model from them in iTwin, run the model through AI analytics to detect cracks, process the analytic data through a 3D tiling pipeline into 3D Tiles format, and disseminate the files into any of Cesium’s runtimes.
Bentley is also partnering with Google, which has adopted the 3D Tiles standard in Google Maps, to incorporate photorealistic 3D tiles and geospatial data from 2,500 cities in 49 countries into a Cesium-powered data ecosystem compatible with real-time 3D engines such as Cesium JS, Unreal, Unity and Nvidia Omniverse.
With these partnerships, Bentley aims to facilitate the use of AI in digital twin environments to create better designs, adjust them in real-time, and by using geospatial data, ensure the right decisions can be made to optimize an infrastructure asset at any point in its lifecycle.
The case for open infrastructure data
Another highlight of Year in Infrastructure 2024 was a call-to-action to make data more open and accessible, which Bentley sees as crucial to unlocking the full potential of AI.
“The infrastructure world is complex and, frankly, it’s often disconnected,” said Mike Campbell, chief product officer at Bentley, during his presentation at the conference. “And to make our existing systems more resilient and adaptable to population growth and climate change, we need to connect people with data.”
Complex infrastructure projects often involve multiple organizations, multiple teams, multiple engineering disciplines and multiple stakeholders working together for a long time. This complexity makes it impossible to rely on any one single system or single vendor.
Instead, infrastructure projects need an ecosystem where data is flexible, interoperable and easy to integrate across different tools and platforms. Bentley says its open applications are designed with this in mind, enabling users to edit models from other vendors and other software products while enabling collaboration across teams.
“A road, bridge or dam could be in operation for 50 years or more, undergoing repairs, upgrades and expansions,” said Campbell. “During this time the software and platform used to manage the asset will evolve.”
By ensuring that the data is open, asset owners and operators are able to adopt new technologies and innovations, while still being able to rely on their own historical data. Bentley encourages the industry to adopt its open source data schema for infrastructure so the sector does not have to keep starting from scratch with their data.
No single vendor can tackle the task alone, which is why open, flexible data systems are a better alternative over the long run. “The future of infrastructure engineering is open, it’s flexible, collaborative and built on a foundation of data that you can share securely,” said Cumins.
Sustainability in infrastructure
Another central theme at Year of Infrastructure 2024 was sustainability. There is increasing demand on existing and future infrastructure to be able to handle population growth while being resilient to—and perhaps even mitigating—climate change. Infrastructure designers, builders and operators also have to account for increased regulatory pressures such as the carbon accounting measures introduced in the U.S. and Europe, which can add time and cost to their projects.
However, the wide variety of methods and tools to calculate embodied carbon means that data is often not transparent, presenting a challenge to designers. Another challenge is the time required to calculate embodied carbon, which can be lengthy when the data needs to go through rigorous verification and data cleansing before it can be used. Because of these factors, accurate carbon data is often not available until late in the design phase—resulting in lost opportunities to reduce carbon in the design.
Bentley believes that the digital twin is ideally suited to meet those challenges. The technology can incorporate data and calculate the trade-offs between economic, environmental and social outcomes related to their projects, improving decision making at all stages of a project.
Bentley unveiled a new Carbon Analysis tool for the iTwin platform that they say can rapidly compute embodied carbon to help engineers minimize carbon and understand the required trade-offs. Continuous calculations during the design phase enable users to generate accurate carbon reports much earlier in the life of the project, and any updates to the design model can instantly show the updated carbon footprint of the project.
The Carbon Analysis tool supports over 30 mainstream design file formats within iTwin and integrates with external lifecycle assessment tools, making it easier to report carbon data to project stakeholders and designers. In turn, it’s easier to explore alternative designs, materials or construction methods. By enabling small adjustments early on and throughout the design process, infrastructure projects can reduce their carbon footprint.
Year in Infrastructure 2024 set out Bentley’s vision of the infrastructure sector in the coming decades, with a particular focus on the AI-powered solutions the company believes will help designers, builders and operators meet the challenges and opportunities that are ahead.
“Let’s use AI, our generation’s paradigm shift, to improve outcomes for the built and natural environment,” said Cumins.
