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---WGAN-TV | Urbanimmersive Sǔreté du Québec Police Service for 3D Crime Scene Documentation | Guest: Urbanimmersive Executive Vice-President François-Hugues Liberge | Wednesday, 7 January 2026 | Episode #413 www.Urbanimmersive.com @fhliberge

Example Tour courtesy of Urbanimmersive | For clarification, police departments get a self player version where the tour is processed and built on a laptop and never goes to the cloud for processing.

WGAN-TV | Urbanimmersive + Sûreté du Québec Police Service for 3D Crime Scene Documentation

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Above is an example Urbanimmersive crime scene tour example. For clarification, police departments get a self player version where the tour is processed and built on a laptop and never goes to the cloud for processing.

Here is the request for proposal documents from Sǔreté du Québec Police Service: WGAN.info/police

While the documents are in French, it's easy to have ChatGPT translate them or ask the documents questions in the language of your choice.
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How a major Canadian police service uses forensic-grade 3D digital twins to document crime scenes

In this episode of WGAN-TV Live at 5 (aired on Wednesday, 7 January 2026), we take a deep dive into how Urbanimmersive partnered with the Sûreté du Québec Police Service, Canada’s largest provincial police force, to modernize crime scene documentation using forensic-grade 3D digital twin technology.

Joining the conversation is François-Hugues Liberge (Executive Vice President, Urbanimmersive), along with WGAN-TV Podcast Co-Host Tom Sparks. Together, we explore how a platform best known to real estate photographers was adapted to meet the strict technical, security, privacy, and courtroom-defensibility requirements of law enforcement.

The discussion begins with context. The Sûreté du Québec covers more than 1,000 municipalities, employs over 8,600 people, and investigates everything from local incidents to major provincial crimes. Their legacy crime scene documentation system was expensive, difficult to operate, slow to deploy, and limited to only a few regions of the province. Investigators were still relying heavily on static photography and manual sketches, often discovering years later in court that crucial context had been missed.

That challenge triggered a detailed public Request for Proposal (RFP). Among the non-negotiable requirements were offline processing, local data control, rapid capture, HDR imaging, accurate measurements, and a solution that could be deployed broadly without extensive technical training.

Urbanimmersive ultimately became the only company to respond to the RFP, largely because it was able to deliver something unique in the market: a fully immersive 3D walkthrough experience that can be captured, processed, hosted, and viewed entirely offline.

During the episode, François explains how Urbanimmersive’s platform—originally designed for real estate—was already capable of offline workflows due to earlier work in sensitive environments such as nuclear plants, tunnels, and other critical infrastructure. That legacy allowed Urbanimmersive to meet police requirements without fundamentally changing the platform itself.

We walk through a live demo showing how investigators can:

✓ Capture an entire crime scene using inexpensive, off-the-shelf 360 cameras
✓ Navigate the space virtually using immersive walkthroughs, dollhouse views, and floor plans
✓ Annotate evidence directly inside the 3D environment
✓ Take measurements after the fact
✓ Embed photos, videos, and other forensic assets
✓ Maintain a complete audit trail showing when and how any modification is made

Equally important, the episode details what does not happen. Crime scene data never touches the cloud. Processing occurs on police-controlled hardware. Files remain local. Nothing is publicly hosted. Nothing is accessible to Urbanimmersive after delivery. For law enforcement, that distinction is critical.

From an operational standpoint, the solution dramatically reduces friction. Capture times drop to seconds per scan. Equipment costs fall under $1,000 per camera. Training time is measured in hours or days rather than weeks. As a result, the Sûreté du Québec can deploy multiple capture kits across the province instead of concentrating expensive equipment in only major cities.

Beyond policing, the conversation broadens to other high-security and institutional use cases where traditional cloud-hosted digital twins are not viable. These include fire departments, transportation accidents, power utilities, water treatment plants, hospitals, government facilities, manufacturing sites, and any environment where privacy, security, or long-term hosting costs are a concern.

For real estate photographers and media professionals, this episode highlights a powerful takeaway:

There is a growing market for offline and ultra-secure 3D digital twin services that many providers cannot currently serve.

Urbanimmersive’s approach opens doors to new verticals, new clients, and new revenue streams—especially in commercial, industrial, and government sectors.

The episode also touches on partnership opportunities, lead sharing, and how service providers can position themselves not just as photographers, but as visual documentation experts capable of handling sensitive environments.

If you work with:

✓ Commercial or industrial clients
✓ Government or municipal organizations
✓ Secure facilities
✓ Asset management, training, or compliance use cases

The full transcript of this episode appears below.

Dan Smigrod (Host):

– How do major police services use forensic 3D digital twin technology to document crime scenes with precision?

– How did Urbanimmersive adopt its digital twin platform to meet law enforcement and courtroom grade requirements?

Stay tuned.

Dan:

Hi all, I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the [www.WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com].

Today is Wednesday, January 7th, 2026. You're watching WGAN TV Live at 5: a podcast for digital twin creators shaping the future of real estate today.

We have an awesome show for you: Urbanimmersive and the Sûreté du Québec Police Service for Forensic 3D Digital Twin Crime Scene Documentation.

Our subject matter expert is Urbanimmersive Executive Vice President, François-Hugues Liberge.

And joining us is WGAN-TV Podcast co-Host, Tom Sparks.

François, thanks for being back on the show.

François-Hugues Liberge (Urbanimmersive Executive Vice President):

My pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me again, Dan.

Dan:

And Tom, good to see you again.

Tom Sparks (WGAN-TV Podcast Co-Host):

Yeah, thanks for having me as your 'Ed McMahon' .. I appreciate it.

That sounds great to me.

François, before we jump into today's topic, to do a deep dive, tell us about Urbanimmersive.

François:

Urbanimmersive as you know, we have been around for many years doing many different things, and among them our core product is a 3D technology, which is a fully immersive technology with floor plans and UiMeet3D like, which is like a Zoom in Zoom conference.

So that's our basic product.

We're based in Montreal serving customers all around the globe.

Mainly in North America, but also in Europe, some in Asia and Australia also.

So that's our two cents. Like in the nutshell, that's what we do.

In terms of the scale and scope of Urbanimmersive, number of customers.

Customers we have over, especially we have mostly real estate photographers, that's our main core business, but also justifying into different areas.

But I'd say we have around 1,500 customers using our platforms on a daily basis.

Dan:

All right. Awesome.

And kind of the big picture of Sûreté du Québec Police Services?

François:

Yeah, this is like one of the main police services in Canada.

They covered the whole territory of Québec. So, as you know, it's a big province, so they have a lot there to cover.

They cover over 1,000 municipalities.

They have over 8,600 employees. And of those over 6,000 are officers.

To give you maybe a scale to compare, the FBI has 10,000 agents.

New York State Police has 4,700 officers.

LAPD has 8,000 officers.

So it's a pretty big police department, especially because they're covering everything.

They cover all major cities in Québec, except the smaller ones, plus highways and everything that's border related.

All the major, like the big crimes and all that, they're all involved in everything.

So they're pretty much everywhere, so.

Dan:

Awesome.

And so what is Sûreté du Québec doing with Urbanimmersive?

François:

They were looking for a solution that would allow them to have better documentation and visual content of every crime scene that they have to investigate.

They had a solution right now that was not really user-friendly.

It was complicated. It was a big... The equipment was massive and it was hard to operate and like the footprint on scene was big and all that.

So that's why they were looking for something else.

And even though they were taking pictures, they still had to do a lot of manual drawing and manual work with it.

And because the equipment was so expensive, so massive, they only had two to cover the whole province.

So they saw it was not fair to other regions of the province that could not have the same service.

They cannot be able to offer the same service in more rural areas that they do in major cities.

So they were looking for something else, something that would be quicker, something that was reliable and that was easy to operate and flexible, like something that was user-friendly.

So they were looking for something else.

So they came across, they spoke to different companies.

They looked for them as the main object, like the main thing, everything had to be offline.

They had to be able to do everything by themselves because like for sure, we don't want to see dead bodies.

And those images are the images that you don't want to be around on the web.

So they were looking for a solution that was fully independent and that they can install on the laptop or on intranet.

Something that they said was on locally.

They looked at Matterport. They liked the feel and touch of Matterport.

They like the possibilities of the end result of the Matterport.

They really liked it.

But again, Matterport is always cloud-based.

So that was like a turnoff for them.

Dan:

Oh, and I think of Urbanimmersive, I think of cloud-based as well.

François:

Yes, and that's what everybody assumes.

But at base, Urbanimmersive 15 years ago, like we did a nuclear plant, we did the subways, tunnels and things like that that were offline.

So that's why when they heard about that and talked to them, a few things like that.

So that's why they were really interested in what we were able to offer to them.

So what they did, like, they had to go, because their process, their procurement processes, so they had to go through an RFP.

So they went with a pretty detailed RFP with all the requirements.

And we applied to it.

We were actually the only company to answer the RFP, which was, I wouldn't say surprising because we knew we had something a bit special, but confirmed that, okay, we're on the right path, right?

We're on the path to something that's really unique and-

Dan:

I'm not surprised because I would imagine, and help me out here, that Urbanimmersive is the only solution that provides a non-cloud processing alternative with an immersive 3D walkthrough experience.

I've been doing this for 10 plus years, I don't recall that there's any other platform that is both offline and an immersive 3D walkthrough experience.

François:

And you actually are right about that, like usually, what we see offline or like, there's two different things.

Either they have like, just like their regular 360 and they have to jump to run.

So you don't have the immersive experience, or maybe not police-related.

But what we saw offline too, like especially for the Army, what they do is like they do with CGI.

So they go with the CAD plans and they recreate a big 3D engine, a 3D environment that runs with Unreal Engine, which is, which is super hard to navigate through and super hard to handle because it's a massive file.

So our solution was something that was really super simple, like we're ticking just regular 360s and then we're complicit with getting more and more complex by adding features in it.

So we had, I wouldn't say cheap now, an affordable solution, that was able to be scaled easily to the requirements.

As opposed to having something bigger trying to downsize it.

We were working the other way around trying to a simple solution that is just getting more complexified, but in a good way, so that.

Yeah, I know I have a lot of questions and I'm sure Tom does as well, but before asking you some more questions, I think it would actually be helpful to see a demo of what a crime scene or even what Sûreté du Québec Police Service sign off on.

If you could go ahead and maybe share your screen.

Yeah, I'll show you and we'll give you an example.

For example, it's not a real crime scene because we do want to go there.

Yes, we do, thank you.

Yes, we appreciate that.

And I understand that Urbanimmersive does not have any access to exactly any of the data.

When the tours are processed, they're processed locally on a laptop. They're not processed in the cloud.

Urbanimmersive doesn't have access to the data.

But for the purpose of being able to show and tell, you have a cloud-based tour to show us.

And again, that's only for the purpose of a demo. It's not exactly how the solution was delivered to the police.

But the end result though, on their laptop is the same though.

Like the end result, the navigation, the tools, everything you saw that could be replicated on the laptop.

Dan:

Awesome.

If you could go ahead and share your screen, that would be great.

While Francçois is doing that, if you want to get in touch with François: www.Urbanimersive.com.

You can even go to: www.Urbanimersive.com/contact and fill out a form and get in touch with François.

We're just starting to see; we see your screen, thank you.

And maybe if you could make that, if that's not full screen, if you could make it full screen for us.

François:

Yep.

So, if you see through the 3D features we have, it's like a 3D tour.

Every dot that you see is where a 360 was done.

Also, there's no limitations on that.

You can do more or less depending on what you want as a result.

Some things sometimes, like if you really need to cover that, you just do more.

It's like, it's a place with a lot of details.

You want to make sure you're covering every angle.

You just do more 360s. And something like that.

So you just want to walk through, then there's no problem.

You just walk through like that.

The Zoom features are also there.

It's like, it's your 360 where you can go look at everything.

So it's like the same, like a fully immersive experience.

And we have what we call hotspot or UI tags with different, so it could be, just like this for example, just like a beauty shot of an evidence that they have.

You can have more information if you want like this about evidence.

So measurements that can be taken on site or in the 3D tour, but you can actually put more information in it.

And also the last feature that I can show here is like a video.

For example, if they have a surveillance video that they really want to put in, they can put that there also.

Dan:

So this looks like what you're showing is actually all the features; all the feature set of Urbanimmersive is available to the police department.

It's just all created offline, hosted offline, viewed offline.

Exactly.

And you have like-

Never goes to the cloud.

Never goes to the cloud, never leaves their computer. Never leaves their-

And then I think part of what I'm also seeing is all this annotation.

So whether the police department is taking photos or video or measurements or has some other graphic or drawing, all that can be annotated within the Urbanimmersive 3D tour experience.

François:

Exactly.

And same thing with the floor plans that like the mini-map, like it's like an interactive map.

Every gray spot is where 360 was done.

And they can put as many things as they want on the floor plan.

So that can have some different information if they want it.

You can use that to navigate.

So if I click on the dot directly, I'll go directly to that dot.

So you don't have to walk through the whole thing to get there through where you want to go.

We also have a dollhouse mini-map.

So that way, that allows you to navigate, I know what's, if you see there like, and there's a wall here, but that allows me to see what's on the other side of the wall.

Hmm.

Without having to go through it.

And then I can say I can go back to the floor plan and then if you saw in the house, there was something interesting right here.

So then we'll-

Dan:

Yeah, so in fact if you, maybe if you could show us going back to the mini-map of how you could quickly navigate to the crime scene.

I know that there's some evidence that we're looking at, but there was an actual...

François:

Exactly.

So I do that, just click on here and that makes me hear directly.

Dan:

And that's a dummy model?

François:

It's a dummy, exactly.

Of your demo demonstration.

Tom:

Then there's also some features for measurements and photos in that bottom right corner, yeah?

François:

Exactly.

Here like this is like, that's UiMeet3D if I want to go, I could unlock you, I meet.

So we could also have a Zoom, but an integrated zoom that's in the visit.

So if, especially for police departments when they have to talk to DAs or things like that, to have other like inputs about what they saw on a crime scene so they can invite people to it.

Dan:

So for clarification for this demo, that feature is turned off.

François:

Exactly.

Dan:

But UiMeet3D, this amazing way to kind of teleport into the tour with others and walk around together as if you're all in space.

François:

Exactly.

Dan:

So rather than doing let's say a Zoom and showing the tour on a desktop, you can actually be immersed in the experience walking around together.

Okay, great.

And there are some other features you're going to point out in the bottom right?

François:

Yes.

The mini-map that's there, we can just like, if you want to have more information, a better view, just take it like, just turn it off and turn it on again.

We have the dollhouse feature to have the whole picture of the whole scene.

Here, you can take a screenshot.

That's also interesting if they want to have something.

Okay, I really want to show this here, so like that.

And then take a screenshot of it.

So that way, you add the picture right away without having to go back or take a, if they just share a file, just one image, it can do that right away here.

Same thing with measurements.

I can just take measurements here.

And the settings, depending if you metric, Imperial, French, English or any other language, Those are-

Dan:

Okay, great.

Unless there was something else to show us if you could take it off of the screen share.

François:

Yes.

Tom:

Just real quick, François, do you have any specs on the measurement accuracy or?

François:

It depends on what we do.

It's like we're over 95%, but there's some recipe that needs to be followed.

Like the height of the tripod must be 48 inches.

What we suggest usually is to put a calibration measure like just knowing something that we can calibrate with ourselves, ourselves with.

Like a measuring tape.

Okay, so we know like this represents the 12 inches so then we can calibrate the whole environment based on that.

So that allows us to have better accuracy by doing that.

Yeah, so typically police will put down those kinds of measurement cards next to evidence.

Tom:

Are you guys able to use those to kind of scale the whole tour?

François:

Exactly. That'd be perfect actually.

Tom:

Yeah. Nice.

Dan:

Cool.

François, reading through the request for proposal, if I understood the request, it was actually only looking for a solution that did 360 photo spheres as opposed to an immersive 3D experience.

Correct me if I'm wrong, and was this just something that blew them away when you were able to take their RFP and go that much further with it?

François:

Yes, exactly. It blew them away.

They were really surprised about all the possibilities that could be done with just getting regular 360 spheres.

They really liked, so the user experience, being able to go more in detail, having a full understanding of the whole crime scene.

Because sometimes, what they do, especially with pictures or when they have their big equipment.

What they're doing is they were really focused on what, so where the body was found for example.

And then they were blindsided and a couple years later in court a defense attorney said, yeah, but like, okay, like we found the body in the kitchen, but like the fight started out, started off in the bedroom.

So then, and they brought new evidence so then they had to go back.

But usually like two years after the house was sold, repainted, this and that.

So it was hard for them to rebuild the whole crime scene with the whole house for example in that case.

Dan:

So what are they doing?

François:

What they liked about the 360 environment like that is like what we just did in the parking lot.

We would go everywhere, we cover every angle so that way, they know that they're not missing anything or they could be missing something.

But at least if it comes back two years later, it won't bother them because they'll know, okay, I can go back virtually in it and it doesn't make sense or get another assessment of the whole scene of the whole situation.

So they like that possibility to have all that, knowing that they'll never miss anything.

That was the most important thing for them.

Dan:

And what kind of camera or cameras are used with Urbanimmersive to create these?

François:

The good thing is we're camera agnostic.

So right now, we're compatible because they're the most popular ones with the Ricoh THETA Z1, Ricoh THETA X and Insta360 X5.

That one was done with Insta360 because we really liked it.

They're really aggressive with tech wise, they're really innovating.

So that's why we like them.

Dan:

So today, a police department could use an off-the-shelf camera like a Ricoh Theta Z1 or Ricoh THETA X or an Insta360 ...

Yep, X4, X5, or RS1. That was like.

But if they had a specific other 360 camera, that would be fine.

We'll just make it compatible, yes.

Actually, we tested the Leica BLK360, it could have worked but again, like it's just an expensive piece of equipment and exactly.

And what they got out of it, like the point cloud and everything was too big of a file to play with.

And it was not worth it for them.

Not in that case.

They did not just need something as precise.

They really wanted something that gives them visual content.

That's what they wanted.

Dan:

So for Urbanimmersive offering the police service, these are off-the-shelf under $1,000, 360 cameras. I imagine.

I think what I'm hearing, the resolution was fine.

The ability I think to shoot HDR was an important piece of the RFP, and the file size in contrast to perhaps a Leica BLK360, was way more manageable.

I think also the RFP called for it, and I was surprised by this.

It said every 360 needs to be completed within less than 10 minutes.

François:

That was part of the spec.

Yes.

Dan:

I don't even know how I could take 10 minutes to...

Because it's so quick.

I mean, Tom.

Tom:

Use a Lecia BLK360 and you'll take 10 minutes.

If you use a Leica BLK 360, it'll take 10 minutes.

François:

So it sounds like Urbanimmersive way over delivered on what the minimum specifications were from Sûreté du Québec police service.

That's what they like because the quickness of the capture, that's what allows them actually to get like the whole area.

Like a house for example, not just where it happened because that way they were able, because you don't want to spend too much time on site then because you contaminate the crime scene.

So you have to be like in and out.

But with the quickness of our Urbanimmersive app and our capture process with that data, it's okay.

Like I said, they're able to get the whole thing in a reasonable amount of time.

So that was for them a big plus also because like I said, like you said, the quickness of it being able to not be in the way.

Dan:

Well I just imagine if the crime scene is on a highway, you have this tension between getting the evidence quickly and efficiently, but also opening up the road to traffic again.

François:

Yes.

Dan:

So it seems like Urbanimmersive is way over delivering in terms of the ability to capture.

Tom:

Is there some benchmark that you talk about?

You put down the camera on the tripod and you're at it's a minute.

François:

Exactly, it's about 10 to 20 seconds to get a 360.

The long thing is if you need to hide, that's the thing that's just like, takes more time, you need to hide.

But if you don't mind being in the crime in the picture, then it's like it takes five seconds and that's it, and then you can move.

Dan:

So probably most of the time is actually spent on the police officer's knowledge and experience of what would be the best possible spot to take the 360 for the purpose of telling the story?

François:

Yes.

But with our technology actually it says like, take as many as you want.

It's simple, it's not time consuming.

So go around, scan the whole thing.

Make more than you need so that way you don't regret it later.

So I should have gotten a spot from that angle or we want this to be a no brainer for them.

Just go there, move the tripod around and that's it.

So that's it.

Tom:

I have a quick question kind of just regarding capturing and maybe people being in the scan.

François:

Obviously, it's impractical to have nobody in the scan, but do you guys offer, is there a blur feature?

Certainly to maybe blur victims if needed, but also to blur people on site law enforcement or cleanup?

Yes, yes.

We have a blur feature that could be automated.

And that's in crime scenes because I don't think they want the victim to be blurred.

Because sometimes you need some information.

Tom:

But like the police or technician that people that do a capture, that person can be blurred.

François:

No problem.

Tom:

Okay, nice.

And when you talk about the equipment, about the 360 cameras, the fact that it can be compatible with almost everything, like cameras that are affordable, it takes the focus away from the gear and more focused on the technology of the thing.

That's the thing that they liked because the other process that they had, the equipment, the gear was so expensive, they had to get approval for that.

And if it breaks, it was a hassle for them to get that repaired or to get a new one.

And also when I talked about earlier, they had two pieces of equipment that were in Québec City in Montreal because that's where more and more crime scenes happen.

But for them, like for them it was not as fair to be outside of Montreal and Québec.

So they wanted something that was accessible.

So the plan is to have a lot of little kits with little cases with tripod and 360 camera.

That could be-

Dan:

Well François, take us through the kit.

I know we don't want to focus so much on gear, but I think it's helpful to understand, the police department asked in the request for proposals related to hardware, software, training, and support.

Can you tell us what the deliverables were to Urbanimmersive to fulfill the request for proposal?

François:

Yeah, for example the capture equipment was a simple NANUK Case with a small tripod from Manfrotto and an Insta360 X4. That was like-

Dan:

Okay, so let's just translate perhaps for the police department that's watching the show for the first time.

A NANUK case is a hard case that contains the camera and the laptop.

The Insta360 X4, the Insta360 X4 is an inexpensive 360 camera, less than $1,000 at the time.

Dan:

Tom, help me out here.

François:

The case was for the, like we had like backup cameras, we had like backup lenses, we had like the tripod and the 360 camera, that was in the kit.

So that way, like it was really capture kits like you can have that in the police car patrol and like have fun with it and everything was there.

Tom:

Did it have a tripod as well?

François:

Yeah, the tripod was in the case, yes.

Tom:

Do you have a sample, do you have the tripod near you where you could show us the footprint of it or the size of it?

Or maybe the model number.

François:

If it was like it was, yeah, it was like the Manfrotto Element Traveler tripod, Manfrotto Element Traveler.

So that was the small one.

So that was like, it's a small aluminum tripod and it fits really well in the case like it was so small.

So literally, everything, the Urbanimmersive Crime Scene Kit contains everything.

Dan:

The hard case contains the camera, the tripod.

François:

Exactly.

The backup camera, the laptop.

It's all completely, literally a kit.

Yeah.

And the laptop, you don't have to bring it on site.

You can just capture.

Because actually, we provided them with a tablet.

Like it was not an iPad.

They had the tablet to be able to, instead of using their phone to [Control The Camera], the Urbanimmersive app was on a tablet.

Tom:

So that way, it was a Windows tablet.

François:

So that way, they were able to access the files and all that on site.

So it was better for them to have that.

Dan:

And so, excuse me for clarification. The laptop was the purpose of being able to process the tour.

François:

Exactly. The best production.

Dan:

Is the laptop carried with?

François:

No, it was like, they can, if they want to be able to have that on site, but usually, the laptops stay at their office.

Dan:

Ah, thank you for that clarification.

François:

But with the tablet, they had an SD card, so everything like the project was on the SD card.

So that way, that's the only thing that they have to manage and share, was the SD card.

SD card.

Tom:

I might have missed it, but what was the tablet again?

Or did you say?

François:

It was a Lenovo tablet.

Tom:

So it was a...

Oh, okay, Got it.

Dan:

Again, it's not a proprietary tablet.

Anything can be off-the-shelf.

I imagine that appealing to the police service was the ability to, if they needed a replacement piece of gear, everything's off-the-shelf.

It's not proprietary gear.

François:

Exactly, exactly.

Dan:

Not a proprietary camera that is needed.

In fact, I've mentioned the Sûreté du Québec police service RFP, for those that would actually want to go see it, it's at: www.WGAN.info/police
and all the documents for the request for proposal or public documents.

And you can see them there.

They are in French, but easy enough to upload to ChatGPT or another AI platform to have it translated or get the key points out of it.

François:

And you'll be able to say Québec as well as Dan does.

So that's good.

Dan:

Thank you.

Thank you, ChatGPT.

Tom:

Were there some questions you were thinking about for François?

Tom:

No, I kind of was asking him as we were going things that were popping up.

So I'll continue and I'll chime in.

Dan:

Okay.

There were two key benefits, I believe I heard.

So the police service, Sûreté du Québec, is presently using a system.

They weren't happy.

It was expensive, hard to use, and required a lot of sophisticated training.

François:

So Urbanimmersive solves the cost of the equipment, the speed of capture, it adds 3D immersive, virtual tour, digital twin experience even beyond the 360s.

Dan:

Were there other things that were just really compelling for the police service when they looked at the Urbanimmersive solution and went, "Wow, that's amazing!"

François:

The fact that the equipment actually was so affordable for them.

It was a nice way to democratize access to that.

That's like, I would say short term goal is to have like in every region that they're covering at least one kit to be able to cover every crime scene that the, and not only, because what they do was, what they were doing before is using equipment only for big crime scenes, not the smaller ones, but smaller ones also important also to cover.

So for them, that was the main goal.

The best way for them to accomplish their mission of being everywhere and offer the same service that every citizen has in the province of Québec.

That was a nice way for them to be okay. It's fair, I don't want a fair trade, but a fair way to go to operate.

So that way, everybody around has the same coverage from the police from Sûreté du Québec all across the province.

Dan:

So that was just picking up on the word that you used, François, democratization.

It seems that the democratization of crime scene documentation with the Urbanimmersive Crime Scene Kit is possible because as you've mentioned, the affordability, the off-the-shelf equipment that is used, the minimum training.

I know that you all provided, Urbanimmersive has provided training, but it's not a solution that's all that hard to understand how to capture with an Ricoh Theta X or an Insta360 V5 camera.

It's relatively simple.

Dan:

So it wasn't like they were taking $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 pieces of equipment and can't afford to put that in multiple locations.

Now, it's this exactly inexpensive kit that can be replicated easily and not necessarily have to even have a laptop with each of those kits because that data is transferable within the police internal network as it might.

François:

Exactly.

Yeah.:

And like you said, it had to be foolproof for anybody, because they're not photographers, they're officers.

So some of them have more expertise in that, but still they needed to have something that was like, like you said, replicable, that was user-friendly.

The goal is to put that in anybody that works at Sûreté du Québec so that way they'll be able to, if there's a crime scene, like I said, a car accident, anything that there could be liability with that, that helps solve problems and prevent problems.

Actually prevent cases where they can be liable for, oh, you missed that.

And I said the thing that they hate when they work so hard to investigate a crime and to have like to solve a crime is being down the road in court a few years after being blindsided by new piece of evidence that they never saw because they were on site but they focused on just one area, one room.

So that for them was frustrating because there's so much work involved in getting the evidence aboard and to comprehend the evidence and comprehend it like a full crime scene.

So that was, for them, the main differentiators like with that, okay, we'll be able to make sure that we treat every crime scene equally and that we don't miss anything.

That was the really important, the most important thing for them.

Dan:

Urbanimmersive is primarily a residential real estate photographer platform, as I see it, correct me if I'm wrong, it's mostly for residential real estate photographers.

When you first saw this RFP, were there things that you went, "Oh, we can't do that."

François:

No, "We actually can do that."

Dan:

Can you talk a little bit about, like, Urbanimmersive the platform has not changed, it's just that you've spun off a solution specifically for police services.

Can you talk a little bit about what that process might have been when you read the RFP?

François:

Surprisingly, we didn't have to do that much to be able to answer the RFP.

That was the surprising thing really, because we did that in the past, like I said many years ago.

But we kept the same workflow and same mindset that we had before.

It's okay, we migrated everything to a new platform.

So it was more up-to-date.

That was the only work we had to do.

But basically, all the features that we had, we knew the pathway, the path to get them to work offline.

So it was surprisingly easy for us to go ... to get there.

And we saw it really as a main differentiator for us versus other technologies that are out there.

I think that's really our, there's a place in the sun for everybody and I think that's our place in the sun in the 3D immersive experience.

Hmm.

Dan:

So, Tom, you looked like you wanted to say something?

Tom:

No, I just kind of went backwards a little bit to the police.

Do you have any stats on like average training time to get somebody up-to-speed to be able to do it?

I mean-

François:

Yes and we train them.

We're used to training photographers.

And we also have some appraisers that are using technology.

We had to train people in Europe all across North America trained from virtually pretty much so, so we knew that we had the knowledge and the know-how to be able to train them.

And we're surprised that the training for the capture was fairly easy.

I'd say a few days.

In a few days, just if they really want to be super good but after a half a day of training, they can go on site and try to try and be functional.

Maybe not experts would be functional.

So that was also something that they really liked saying, okay, going forward if they want a kit in every patrol car in Québec, they know that anybody in the car will be able to operate that.

Dan:

I want to go back to that RFP because I imagine that data control privacy. It seems like you solved at least half the puzzle by not processing in the cloud.

Were there other features that you needed to address in terms of the data control, the privacy of the data, being able to have it courtroom defensible?

François:

That's why the RFP, we were looking for two laptops because they really want to make sure that everything was controlled and small.

So if everything is there, they'll make sure that all the data is controlled.

And now, they saw that okay with an SD card that nobody replicates, they download everything They can down erase, nothing's kept on the tablet.

Everything's on the SD card.

They download everything to their laptop, they erase everything else.

So they know the data is really secure for that.

So now we're working with them to be like the next step will have to be able to put that on their intranet.

So to be more accessible.

But again, everything leaves a footprint so they know when the image was taken.

If in our processor, if everything has changed, if somebody goes in and modifies a 3D tour, like the tour by adding another 360 panorama, whatever, we'll know exactly like I said, they'll leave a footprint, we'll know exactly when every modification was done.

So for them, that was a secure environment for that.

And also the other thing, like when you talk about training, the other thing ... like it was a processing that we usually do ourselves.

Part of it is automated but still has some human involvement.

So we've trained them to do that.

So that was the other thing that we weren't sure how that would go.

And we were surprised that it was, again, after two days of training, they were able to be functional and recreate by themselves like any 3D environment that they had to work on.

Tom:

And then the-

Dan:

Sorry, go ahead.

No, please, Tom.

Tom:

No, I was just going to say, is the training part of the package price with this or is training kind of an additional thing or you order x amount of kits, you get free training or what?

Is there a self-training method that they can do?

François:

There's many things.

There's no one size that fits all.

You really free customs and mold to what they want.

They want training, they want to buy a bank of hours for training.

So we were able to do that.

We didn't go through the bank with the training that we did for the capture and the post processing.

We didn't even get the half of the training that they purchased.

Because I say it's a fairly easy process to do so.

If there are police departments that are watching today's show, can they just reach out to you directly and engage your services?

Dan:

Do they need to do an RFP?

Is that up to them?

Or maybe just if you could take us through perhaps the RFP process with the timeline, maybe that would just be helpful to signal to larger police departments and then talk about smaller police departments.

François:

Like I said, there's no one size fits all.

We can be, I won't say creative, but we can make sure that it fits.

Like the price so far has never been an issue.

And so there's many ways to look at it.

And depending on a fully licensed thing, if they wanted more than one station, two stations, working stations like laptops, how many cameras they wanted for Sûreté du Québec, they really wanted for us to be next to them.

So that's why they purchase hours of training and all that we really wanted to make sure we're taking them by the hand.

Also assessment of their IT for the integration for the intranet.

So that's why there's many things involved that made the RFP a bit higher price wise.

But it could have been lower if there were no laptops.

For example, if their police department already has sufficient equipment or we can just integrate that into their equipment.

So again, that makes it more accessible.

But again, and depending on the procurement laws here in Québec, they're pretty strict.

So that's why they had to go through an RFP.

But usually, we're managed, we can go under what the main requirement for RFP.

That's usually doable.

Dan:

Okay, I think what I'm hearing is soup to nuts.

If you want soup to nuts, you can have it.

If you just need the soup, if you just need the nuts, you can just have it configured to whatever your needs are.

And I think the key thing is that Sûreté du Québec is the largest police service in Canada, which probably says something about you've been stress tested by a very large, vetted by a very large police service.

Before I move on to asking you about other use cases for this platform, is there anything else to talk about related, either specifically to Sûreté du Québec police service or police services in general as a category?

François:

But just like Sûreté du Québec, what we liked about that is because they already had a solution in place.

They were familiar with the [360 Capture] process, so it was a different solution.

But still they were familiar with, okay, we're getting pictures, 360 spheres from a crime scene.

So for us, we consider that a good task because they were able to compare us with something else.

As opposed to somebody who implements something like that and going from sketches on a piece of paper to a full 3D technology.

For sure, they'll be happy because from where they're starting from, like they'll be happy with the end result.

But with them having them and being able to challenge us and to benchmark us with something else, it was a nice sentiment for us at the end.

So, okay, like we're doing, they saw, and like you said, it's a big police department, they have access to technologies from all around the world.

So when Sûreté du Québec publishes an RFP, people look at it and so they're really credible and people say, okay, like if they want that, how can we answer it?

So that's why we thought it was a good benchmark for us in a good way, like you said, tested and approved.

Like that's what we like.

They've been using it for a few months now, so almost a year now.

So with this, it's really so far so good.

So that's why we're confident that we can offer that technology and that solution to other police departments around the globe.

So you said they've been using it almost a year, roughly a year.

Tom:

Do you have any feedback on numbers as far as how tours they've done?

No, I would've liked to but they say they're satisfied.

Okay.

And I'm guessing since it takes somewhat of a long time to actually go to court on cases, it's a little bit new to know, to ask you questions about.

Tom:

Well tell us about the courtroom experience so far?

And it's like insurance or airbags, you're happy to have it, but you don't want to use it too often.

Yeah.

So it's the same thing.

Dan:

So in a moment I'm going to ask you about residential real estate photographers, our sweet spot for We Get Around Network, WGAN-TV, our podcast.

A few things I wanted to mention and then another topic.

First, any police services that are watching today can go to: www.Urbanimersive.com
...

Specifically:

www.Urbanimersive.com/contact

Fill out the form and just request information to hear back from Urbanimmersive on your unique situation.

Second, if you wanted just an overview of Urbanimmersive, we've done a number of WGAN-TV Podcast episodes.

You can go to:

www.WGAN.info/urbanimmersiveONwgan

… and among the most recent shows was a refresh: Intro to Urbanimmersive Services for Real Estate Photographers.

While not specifically for crime scenes, I think it gives you a good overview of Urbanimmersive, the company, the services, etc.

And again, before we talk a little bit about real estate photographers that may be watching our show today, you've designed this offline solution for police departments that is private, secure, addresses data control and privacy issues.

Has Urbanimmersive thought about what other verticals might be able to take advantage of this outside of police services?

François:

Yes, and like CSI like this crime scene is like a full blown offline, everything really, like fully independent, but there's some midway solutions that are at the end, the end result is still offline.

But the process may be a bit different.

And one thing we have done actually with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police here is to really have a midway solution.

The end result is still offline.

They're doing everything by themselves.

But the pause processing is done by us with.

One of our employees had a background of security clearance so they can watch and work in critical environments.

But again, we just do post processing and push everything back to them.

So we're not keeping everything on file.

So we don't have any, like once everything is done, everything's deleted on our side.

So that-

Dan:

If I'm hearing you correctly, there's actually two different secure services.

One is here's the suitcase, here's the NANUK case that the imagery never gets processed in the cloud.

It's only done on the police department's laptop.

That's one secure solution.

But you have this other solution, which while it is cloud-based, you have a team member that has gone through security training and you have processes and procedures for things that perhaps maybe is less, and I'll use an example and perhaps it's not the right example, but a school system that wants to have documentation of all their schools and classrooms, they're fine with Urbanimmersive processing it in the cloud.

François:

They're fine with a process that has a secure person who's involved in the processing.

They're fine with having Urbanimmersive agree to delete the content from its servers and provide local hosting for the school system.

Dan:

Would that be perhaps an example?

François:

Yes, and the cloud base is really, I won't even say cloud base is just like, the files are transferred over the internet then pushed back over the internet.

But like, but that's it.

Like nothing is hosted.

So it's really-

Dan:

Great.

And then I think, Tom, you and I were talking I think [6 January 2026] and I think you might've even had some use cases you were thinking about for either one of these solutions that were not specific to police departments.

Tom:

Yeah, I mean I was sharing that I got a call from a local fire department fire captain who wanted some insight into the different platforms to be able to do post-fire accident reconstruction, I guess.

So I'm assuming going into a house that may have been burned out or a business that had been burned out and scanning it and using that as some of the assets to investigate what caused the fire and need it for court maybe at some point.

And so this was several months ago and I shared my thoughts on it and it would've been great to know about this [Urbanimmersive solution] to share this.

And so I'm going to go back to her and say, "Hey, I found something new. Check it out."

So there's that I was thinking kind of related to police, but accidents, traffic accidents, emergency preparedness for schools.

So if there's ever like-

Dan:

I think you were also talking about private security firms.

Tom:

Yeah, so in the town over from where I'm at, the local police department is a little short staffed and they've brought on a private security firm to handle some of the, I guess more mundane tasks.

Mundane, I don't know if that's the right word, but, so yeah, I could see this fitting in nicely where the security guards, you have kits in their trunks and if they're out doing something on behalf of the police, they can just capture it and easily give it to the police and maybe somebody back at the office can review it and kind of use the security as a liaison between what's happening on site and what's happening back at the department.

Dan:

Yes, and François, were there other verticals that Urbanimmersive was thinking would be able to leverage these two existing secure Urbanimmersive solutions?

François:

And we already did a few of them like say power companies for example.

Like they have nuclear plants, they have dams, like anything that's critical that they don't want the environment to be out there, but they need that, they need it for asset management; training purposes for when they need to plan some work.

We did some water treatment plants, the same thing with that.

So for them, they like the fact that we're able to process everything for them and then like a finished product that could be hosted offline by them on their servers.

So that's why, and especially when you talk about photographers, real estate photographers, they all have big networks, big customers also that say, especially in comers, the commercial ones, they like I have a customer has any industrial building for example, where there's, I won't say company secrets, but we know about industrial spying and people don't want to share their workflow and their setup.

So, but they need that for training purposes.

So they would like to have something that's like, say again hosted locally.

So everything that we offer to them for that, that's perfect for them.

That's really nice, those are other verticals like say, asset management for us is a big thing.

And like say it covers many, many different things just to hospital for example.

They can use the online version for the pediatric patients they have.

To say okay, this is where you'll go.

This is the waiting room, this is the living room.

But they still have to manage the whole building for, say, emergency situations for contingency plans, for firefighters to be able to train themselves.

They can have those environments offline that can be transferred to the fire department so they can train themselves without having to walk through the old hospital.

So they can know beforehand if they have to intervene there, they'll know the area just by turning themselves at their station and working through it.

So those are things that are...

The offline aspect of it opens up many possibilities.

And I see real estate photographers being able to offer that to their network and people that they know in their community, being able to offer that service, which is a bit different than the other guys around.

So the offline aspect in those is really, really big, I think.

Dan:

Well François, for service providers, real estate photographers that are watching this show today thinking, "Well what's in it for me?"

François:

In fact, let me ask the question a little bit differently.

Dan:

Tom Sparks, Owner, Managing Editor and Publisher of the We Get Around Network.

François:

His other hats are Sparks Media Group and Scan Your Space, a large service provider, with lots of clients including commercial clients.

You heard him talk a little bit about fire departments.

What is it that you would want to tell Tom as a service provider of...

Dan:

What's the opportunity perhaps for Tom?.

Tom:

To diversify its customer base because we know residential is cyclical.

There's ups and downs, there's off seasons and big, big booms in the springs and in the fall.

François:

So those like the opportunity to be able to offer a service that's offline to more industrial or institutional customers that say can you offer the full service?

We'll take the scans, I'll come back to you with the USB key with the project on it.

Tom:

So for me, that's a big selling point for them to be able to have another bigger customer base instead of diversifying their revenue where revenue comes from.

Dan:

Well let's break it down if I can into maybe three categories and Tom, please step in here.

You're the actual service provider that's out there shooting and has many service providers shooting for you.

I think of the three categories, the first is, let's call it police departments.

Tom is not going to be engaged by the police department to go shoot a crime scene.

So what's in it for him?

Is it just altruistic?

"Oh, I know people who are in law enforcement and I should tell them about this solution"?

François:

We can offer, like, if we talk about really the commercial side of it, we can offer like a fine fit to anybody because they'll be licensed, involved and all that.

So the photographer that has connections with that, we can offer them a finders fee if they bring us a police department.

But it's a nice way for them to also be involved because everything happens for a reason.

So it's a nice way to open doors and have more contacts and be able to position themselves more as just a real estate photographer, but like a visual content expert.

So that's what-

Dan:

So that would really go back to the second category of compile: let's say businesses that have secure spaces and really, you mentioned nuclear power plant that we've talked about, manufacturing facility.

So in the case of a manufacturing solution, it may be, Tom, have you ever run into a manufacturing facility or commercial space where the client said, "gee, I'd really like to have a digital twin, a virtual tour of my space, but I just can't have it hosted on a cloud solution?"

Tom:

Yeah, all the time.

Nobody wants to pay hosting fees.

So, yeah, no, I do.

I have clients that want to keep things quiet for just confidentiality reasons.

They don't want it out there.

they don't want it looked at.

I've had people say, can we buy a device?

Is there a device that we can buy?

You can come operate it and just leave it with us so you don't even see it.

Take it back home and process it.

François:

So yeah, that's definitely a use case.

I was going to say, kind of maybe related to that in a way, have you been contacted by anybody who wanted more information, almost like a more customizable type platform where maybe in the case of a water treatment plant or a utility energy utility, they want some sort of IoT data being displayed on this 3D tour.

Almost like a dashboard for internal use only.

Tom:

Yeah, I really like where you're going with that.

'Because for me, my vision is to have an immersive tour being a dashboard.

You come in the morning, you open that and that talks to every system that they have.

So it's a nice way to centralize information.

People are getting more and more visual now.

Like they have their softwares out there for managing anything for sometime, some are like say IoT, sometimes some are direct, we really want to have an on time actual reading, a live reading of a pump for example, or a video feed that you have and we have surveillance cameras.

So that's why I think the success of a patrol tour is to have it as a dashboard that communicates with everything else.

That you have all your backend systems.

And just like if there's any critical thing that happens, anything created critical that happens, it flashes, you have like a little display, hey, like there's a red light click on it then brings you directly in the room where that situation's happening.

So you can manage from far, you don't have to be on site to be able to manage teams on site.

Especially with the UImeet3D solution we have, you can direct people and it's okay, go there, do this, this and that.

We had like-

Dan:

I hear you on that François, excuse me, I hear you on that use case.

And it's very sophisticated and it's an exciting use case.

But I really think for the purpose of our photographers, real estate service providers, I want to say, the key takeaway that I heard from Tom was, "I speak to potential clients all the time that have secure locations or are particularly sensitive on hosting fees when digital assets need to be saved for very long periods of time."

So I think perhaps, Tom, your ears kind of just perked up, well, "Oh, there's now an opportunity; there's now a solution that didn't previously exist that is both a 3D immersive digital twin experience, and it's either offline or this second scenario that François talked about in terms of its super-secure. The data just gets processed and downloaded and boom, we're done. It never ends up being public."

François:

And like you said, we talked about something that's like aiming for the fence; the dashboard and everything.

That's like, that's the big home run.

That's the big home run.

Dan:

But yeah, it can be a lot simpler than that.

François:

Just when-

Dan:

It can simply be that it's a scanning opportunity where that opportunity may have been, "Oh, it has to be hosted in the cloud. No, that doesn't work for me. Oh, I have secure locations that I have manufacturing facilities, nuclear power plants, mechanical, electrical, plumbing spaces. I don't possibly want these spaces to be on the internet, even if the tours are set to private. It just frightens me that we may open up to the world an opportunity to walk into our secure factories."

François:

And so Tom, I think that what you're pointing out is like, "Oh, well I can do all that scanning now that maybe I couldn't have done before."

Dan:

Because Urbanimmersive is now, the only platform that I'm aware of is 3D immersive digital twin experience and has the security features that François talked about.

François:

One thing that we did, it was for the city actually.

They had the municipal sports complex with soccer fields, indoor soccer fields.

They had a pool, indoor pool also, and a skating rink.

They used the technology for two things.

The first one being for actually an RFP, that they need us to do some work.

So we scanned the whole thing for them.

And they used, okay, one room where they wanted to do work.

So they put the RFP documents that I shared with Sûreté du Québec, something similar to that, into the 3D tour.

So you were able to get the information then see it live in the 3D tour to say, okay, that's what you're asking for.

So you were able to take measurements.

So they were able to have a first, I say first draft.

You're interested, okay.

Instead of walking through the whole thing with everybody, every contractor that could be interested, they sent that first.

So that way, they were able to say the first screening actually to say, okay, like, "Yeah, I'm interested."

So then they went on site.

And also they were using that for the lifeguards over the weekends.

With the pool, they had a chlorine system sometimes.

And if it doesn't go well, they were both in the 3D tour to have all the manual instructions to say, this is how you shut it down.

If anything happens, yeah, go there, do this and that.

Dan:

Which actually, you led into that.

The third category, which I wanted to mention, was government.

And that would be a use case for the government.

François, before we say bye, Tom, you had some questions that you wanted to ask?

Tom:

Yeah, just for those of us who might be intimidated on walking into our local fire department or police station, is there something set up in place currently where, not that it's ever a guaranteed, but if you ever were to get a lead at Urbanimmersive saying, "Hey, there's a need for a scan in this area."

Are you able to feed leads to people who already have equipment?

François:

That's our goal, especially for the asset management market that we're dealing with, a big company here in Montreal, they have 16,000 locations worldwide.

And then we have a pilot project with them right now for their stores here in Montreal.

And if it goes well, perfect, but they don't want to buy cameras; they don't want to do all the scans.

So that's, again, that's like you said, that's kind of the kind of thing that we would like to offer our network of photographers to "hey, like there's an opportunity."

And the good thing, those are not time sensitive.

So okay, before the end of the year, we need to get all those stores done so they can be done in the downtime.

So we think that for photographers that could be a good opportunity and a nice way to fill the downtimes to be able, when there's less real estate, go do convenience stores or pharmacies or restaurants or, that's our goal.

Dan:

That's awesome.

I hope that the 15,000 pans out because We Get Around Network and can certainly help you with help wanted ads at: www.WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com to help you find service providers in markets that you presently don't have coverage.:

Tom:

Before we say bye, did you have a last question for François?

François:

No.

Dan:

François, did you have a last question for Tom?

You want to give me one last pitch of why he should be out talking up Urbanimmersive for secure 3D immersive tours?

François:

But yeah, about the lead thing you said about fire departments and if you had anybody you think, okay, there's that fire department or police department, you just give us information.

Like now we'll do some work and work in partnerships with a guy like you, Tom, to make sure that we win that contract and we work on it together.

We see ourselves as partners for photographers.

We've always been there for photographers and we see this as a good opportunity for Urbanimmersive, but for photographers also out there.

Dan:

François, thanks for being on the show today.

François:

Pleasure.

Again, thanks for having me.

Dan:

Tom, thanks for joining in as well.

Tom:

Thanks for having me, Dan.

Dan:

We've been visiting with our subject matter expert, Urbanimmersive Executive Vice President, François-Hugues Liberge.

And also joining us today, WGAN-TV Podcast co-host Tom Sparks.

More importantly, the Owner, Managing Editor and Publisher of the We Get Around Network.

For Tom and François, I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the [www.WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com] and you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.