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Digital Twins and 3D Modeling for Infrastructure and Urban Environments

Hosted by Blaine Horner, Business Unit Leader – Geomatics, Merrick & Company

A packed session at the February 2026 seminar brought together four leading voices in geospatial technology to explore what digital twins really mean — and what they can realistically deliver — for infrastructure and urban environments. Moderated by Blaine Horner of Merrick & Company, the session featured presentations from Esri, gNext Labs, and Langan Engineering, each offering a distinct lens on how 3D modeling, AI-enabled inspection, and indoor mapping are reshaping the field. One theme emerged clearly across all three talks: the data has always been there — the challenge now is connecting it into something truly actionable.

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Esri – ArcGIS Reality Engine | Andrew Carey, Sr. Business Development

Andrew Carey opened the session with what he called a challenge to the industry. Rather than positioning Esri's platform as just another data collection and visualization tool, Carey pushed the audience to reconsider what a digital twin actually needs to do to be useful. His core argument: a hand-drawn floor plan and a 3D scan are both digital representations of the real world — but neither is a digital twin until it can answer questions, integrate live data, and simulate outcomes.

System of Systems: Carey introduced Esri's three-tier framework — system of record (where data is stored and recalled), system of insight (what is extracted and analyzed), and system of engagement (how it's shared and made accessible). This framework, he argued, is what separates a digital twin from a digital model. Every component — LiDAR scans, BIM data, CCTV feeds, IoT sensors — needs to connect to the others through a common location standard for the whole to become meaningful.

City of Nottingham Case Study: Carey highlighted the city of Nottingham, UK as a real-world example of a purpose-built digital twin. The city's permitting process for building and engineering was creating bottlenecks that were stifling investment. By integrating aerial surveys, ground control, building scans, and public-facing 3D models into a single connected system, they accelerated that process and created a platform for public comment on proposed developments. The city expects a two-pound return on every pound invested.

City of Raleigh Case Study: In partnership with Nvidia and Microsoft, the city of Raleigh deployed a digital twin focused on safety and mobility. Using aerial 3D scan data to contextualize the urban environment, the city integrated static CCTV feeds and AI-powered feature extraction to monitor traffic patterns in real time. The system can identify a stalled vehicle at an intersection, trigger a traffic alert, and dispatch local police — all automatically. This, Carey said, is what makes a digital twin genuinely useful: it solves a real problem your customer already has.

Oriented Imagery: Carey emphasized Esri's oriented imagery workflows as an underutilized tool in the industry. When a drone or aircraft collects data for a photogrammetric model, those raw source images — which often have higher clarity and fidelity than the processed outputs — can be linked directly into the same scene. Clicking on any point in the model pulls up the best raw image of that location. For inspection and documentation workflows, this adds significant value with data already being collected.

ArcGIS Reality Engine: Esri's continued investment in its Reality Engine includes photometric tools for realistic 3D renderings, true ortho workflows that remove building lean and geometric distortion, and web-performant delivery so that complex 3D models render quickly in a browser rather than sitting on an engineer's machine. The broader goal, Carey said, is making spatial data accessible to everyone in an organization — not just the technical specialists.

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gNext Labs – AI Defect Detection Platform | Russ Ellis, President

Russ Ellis, President of gNext Labs, came to the session from Roanoke, Virginia with a focused message: AI is finally removing the bottleneck in infrastructure asset inspection. His SaaS platform takes data collected by drones and other sensors and turns it into annotated, geolocated, trackable defect records — replacing the 144-page PDF report that nobody reads with a live, collaborative platform that engineers can interrogate directly.

Bridge Inspection: gNext's bridge inspection workflow starts with a drone-collected 3D model of the structure. In their AI viewer, users can toggle individual defect layers on and off — cracks, spalls, patches — across the entire surface. Every defect receives a unique ID, a GIS location, and quantified measurements (average width, length). Crucially, patches are classified as defects too, so inspectors can evaluate whether a prior repair is holding or deteriorating. Outputs flow directly into CAD software with legend, summary table, and imagery intact, or can be exported to CSV for further analysis.

Airport Runway Inspection: Ellis demonstrated the platform's runway surface analysis capabilities, showing how crack and patch layers light up across a full runway from altitude, then become increasingly granular as the user zooms in. The visual layering enables inspectors to see the relationship between old patches and new cracks — a critical input for understanding where remediation efforts have succeeded and where budget needs to be redirected.

Vegetation Clearance (FAA Compliance): For general aviation airports with FAA-mandated approach angle requirements, gNext's platform maps vegetation growth against those clearance thresholds. Growth that exceeds 7- or 10-year thresholds is flagged in yellow; anything in active non-compliance is highlighted in red. The system generates detailed reports identifying every obstruction by precise location, the parcel of land it's on, and the owner of that parcel — making it far easier to initiate the remediation process.

Telecommunications Tower Inventory: gNext has built a module specifically for communication tower inspection and inventory. Using drone capture, the AI identifies individual components on the tower structure and builds a database — equipment type, height, manufacturer, antenna azimuth, and more. The platform also supports ad hoc design work: users can model what happens if a new antenna is added at a specific location or if the azimuth of an existing one is adjusted.

Core Value Proposition: Ellis closed with a summary of what the platform delivers: reduced risk, faster assessment, improved safety, and better budget allocation. The elimination of static inspection reports in favor of a live, queryable, predictive platform is, in his framing, the essential shift that AI enables in this space.

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Langan Engineering – Indoor Mapping with Mobile LiDAR | Russell Hall, Senior Survey Project Manager | Brock Saylor, Client Director / Senior Project Manager

The final presentation came from Langan Engineering's digital solutions and survey team. Russell Hall handled the data collection and registration side of the workflow; Brock Saylor covered the downstream GIS applications, use cases, and platform integration.

SLAM Technology and Scanner Selection: Langan primarily uses two Leica SLAM scanners for indoor mapping: the Leica Arc Backpack and the BLK2GO. Hall emphasized what he called the most overlooked factor in scanner selection: inventory. The best scanner on the market is only as good as the vendor's ability to get you a replacement unit quickly when something goes wrong on a critical job. Leica, he noted, has strong support infrastructure and has been available even at 1:00 AM during difficult site access situations.

Leica Pinpoint Registration Software: Hall walked through the registration workflow using Leica's Pinpoint software, which it acquired roughly a year ago. Designed specifically for indoor mapping, Pinpoint allows users to import multiple scans, colorize them, and align them using a cross-section/slice view — snapping clouds together based on proximity. The software provides overlap statistics and measurable error readouts in a single session, with final output ready for import into Esri environments or other downstream platforms.

Data Viewers and Output Formats: Langan uses four viewers depending on client needs: the Esri environment (their primary platform), TrueView, Bentley's iTwin Orbit, and TopoShare from TopoDot. For the AutoCAD-based delivery workflow, they generate Indoor GML-compatible files. Hall singled out TrueView's tilt-shift visualization and its ability to tie oriented imagery to specific rooms as particularly useful for client-facing deliverables.

Regulatory Drivers (K–12 Education): Saylor noted that roughly 20 states now require indoor mapping for K–12 facilities, with some explicitly calling out GIS. California was among the first; Texas, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado are following closely. Requirements typically mandate accurate floor plans and documented locations of life-safety equipment including fire extinguishers, HVAC systems, egress paths, and security cameras.

Emergency Management and Facility Operations: The core use case Saylor demonstrated was a five-step platform build-out: assessing existing data, filling gaps through scanning or GPS ground truthing, creating a digital twin as the system of record, configuring maps and apps for multiple stakeholders, and integrating building systems (HVAC, cameras, asset management). A Chapman University example highlighted the risk of critical institutional knowledge residing entirely in one retiring employee — "pulling it out of Bob's brain" and into a GIS-based system of record.

Application Tiers: Saylor described three distinct app types within the indoor GIS ecosystem: a status monitoring dashboard for facility managers and administrators (space allocation, security camera gap analysis); a general explorer application for public or campus-wide navigation; and a mobile update app for field-level maintenance staff to move assets, update records, and keep the system current without requiring specialized GIS skills.

City of Broomfield Deployment: A live demonstration showed an in-progress deployment for the City and County of Broomfield, Colorado. The platform integrates floor plans with oriented imagery throughout the facility, enabling users to click any point on the map and instantly view the BLK2GO-captured 360-degree imagery from that location. The project was approximately 99% complete at the time of the presentation.

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About the Digital Twins and 3D Modeling for Infrastructure and Urban Environments Session

This seminar brought together leading practitioners in geospatial technology, AI-enabled inspection, and indoor mapping to explore the current state and near-term trajectory of digital twin applications across infrastructure, civic, and facility environments. Hosted by Blaine Horner, Business Unit Leader – Geomatics at Merrick & Company, the session challenged attendees to think beyond data collection and toward connected, interoperable, and predictive systems.

Companies Presenting:
Esri – ArcGIS Reality Engine | Andrew Carey, Sr. Business Development
gNext Labs – AI Defect Detection & Digital Twin Inspection | Russ Ellis, President
Langan Engineering – Indoor Mapping with Mobile LiDAR | Russell Hall, Senior Survey Project Manager | Brock Saylor, Client Director / Senior Project Manager