Latest tech offers fresh perspective
THIS PACE OF CHANGE APPEARS TO BE RAPIDLY INCREASING AS THE WORLD BECOMES MORE INTEGRATED. AS WE FEEL MORE TIME POOR, WE NEED TO WORK SMARTER.
THERE is one piece of memorable advice that my greatgrandfather shared with all his descendants: “Do things the easy way, not the hard way”.
Those who didn’t seem to follow it could find themselves referred to as “not too smart”.
When my great-grandfather passed away after a brilliant innings of 104, he had experienced a lot of change — he saw the world become much faster and significantly smaller.
This pace of change appears to be rapidly increasing as the world becomes more integrated and better connected.
As we feel more time-poor, we need to work smarter.
The need to do things smarter is paramount when every city, government department and organisation is fighting for limited funding.
They all need to undertake greater detailed planning and prepare strict and comprehensive business cases to justify their projects.
The cost to complete these studies has dramatically increased as the required amount of detail has grown.
When it comes to city, infrastructure and transport planning, the use of digital technology is expanding and making these early-stage studies a lot more informative as well as making it easier to develop different options and make changes.
From the very start of a project and during the concept design phases, companies like Arup are using digital tools such as drones to capture data from the sky and under water to establish point cloud data sources.
This data enables the preparation of highly accurate surveys and geospatial mapping, which, in turn, can later be used to create imagery of landscapes that can be seen — and experienced — as virtual augmented reality.
Digital technology and software are also used to evaluate and communicate design solutions in smart ways. These tools help make planning “smarter” as well as tell the story of a project in ways that more people can appreciate.
People expect smart digital tools to be part of life. Today more than 88 per cent of Australians use smart phones which have more power than most family computers of the past and include more “life tools” than ever before.
Organisations which commission projects should expect that these digital tools are being used to complete their projects in clever, time-efficient and engaging ways.
One of the biggest benefits is how the complexities of projects can be explained and discussed with local communities who want to understand longterm improvements as well as, for example, impacts during construction.
With digital tools removing the reliance on technical drawings, anyone could potentially sit in their lounge room and take a virtual walk along a new dining precinct using their smart phone or tablet.
They could use interactive mapping to see the route of a proposed new road, take a drive through a proposed upgraded intersection, or walk through a proposed new shopping centre.
Digital technology is the future of working smarter in all aspects of life. Arup is proud to be leading the consulting industry in Cairns in digital technology and smart thinking.
We offer a wide range of digital tools to assist any project. Some of these smart tools are being displayed at the LGAQ Future Cities Summit this week.