This year’s Hexagon Live Brussels demonstrated how digital twin technologies are being applied in infrastructure development, defence and many other sectors, according to Wim van Wegen, GIM International’s head of content. Here, he shares his findings from the two-day event (1-2 October), which brought together industry leaders and experts in the city’s historic Maison de la Poste venue to explore the latest developments in smart digital reality.
One highlight was the panel discussion featuring Frank Tierolff (Kadaster), Rink Kruk (National Geographic Institute Belgium), Rob van de Velde (Geonovum) and Nick Chorley (Hexagon). They explored a key issue driving advancements in our industry: how to effectively leverage the vast amounts of geodata. As the massive geospatial data lake grows increasingly unmanageable, the challenge lies in figuring out how to help people make meaningful use of it.
As Kruk noted: “Governments need to master their own data, but the commercial sector has a very important role to play too, namely facilitating the data.” Van de Velde added that the public sector is increasingly taking on the role of servicing the data. Unsurprisingly, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) was another major topic throughout the two days, including in the panel discussion. “Regulation is always lagging behind practice,” Tierolff remarked on AI governance.
Pixar
It was intriguing to discover how geospatial technologies – including sensors and point cloud imagery – are being utilized in a wide variety of fields beyond the traditional geospatial sector. For example, the event provided interesting insights into the structure of a defence geoportal.
Another standout moment for me was the second panel discussion, which focused on 3D digital twins using technologies from Microsoft, NVIDIA and Hexagon. NVIDIA’s Gabriel Vincent highlighted the company’s pivotal role in advancing digital twin technology when he discussed universal scene description (USD). Originally developed by Pixar Animation Studios, which has a rich history of working with intricate, distributed scene graphs for its award-winning animated films, USD can be thought of as the HTML of 3D – a foundational standard that could revolutionize how we build and communicate in digital environments. As a result, this represents an exciting step towards establishing a unified language for digital twins.
Driving innovation forward
Last but not least, it is worth mentioning the impressive 25-year journey of Luciad, which has been part of the Hexagon family since 2017. Since being founded in 1999 as a spin-off from the Catholic University of Leuven, Luciad has evolved into a leading platform for advanced geospatial data visualization and real-time situational awareness. Now integrated within Hexagon AB, the team is driving innovation forward, developing faster and more powerful solutions to meet the industry’s ever-evolving needs.
Before attending his engaging keynote, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Frank Suykens, who has played a key role in Luciad’s growth since joining in 2003. During our conservation, he told me – among many other things – about bringing different worlds together. He explained that the Luciad software was initially mainly focused on aerospace and defence, but that a growing part of it now runs through the entire Hexagon portfolio. Relevant applications include digital twins for cities – with cities that are sustainability pioneers leading the way. Within Hexagon, it is a firmly held belief that geospatial technologies can be an enormous help in the energy transition and dealing with climate change, so it is important to consider which new or existing business models support this.
In his subsequent keynote, Suykens explained how HxDR and Luciad are driving the Reality Cloud Studio solution together, enabling seamless connections between people, projects and reality capture data. The approach emphasizes easy data integration, eliminating the need for preprocessing while relying on standards-based solutions. Most importantly, it ensures the data is presented in a visually functional, accessible and also attractive manner. This enables the use of visual analytics to better understand complex solutions.
