Virspatial Technologies Drives Sustainability and Energy Savings with Digital Twin for Singapore Research University

Virspatial Technologies is an AWS Partner that provides digital twin solutions and services to customers around the world. The company leverages its in-house expertise to create a robust digital twin platform called Twinverse, running on Amazon Web Services (AWS). With this digital twin solution, a prominent research university in Singapore has increased energy efficiency, leading to a 30 percent reduction in operational costs and 35 percent less greenhouse gas emissions. The university is also lowering real estate costs by 25 percent through space optimization.

AWS Partner Virspatial Technologies (Virspatial) is making its mark on spatial computing. The Singapore startup launched in 2019, strives to bridge the gap between virtual and physical spaces by offering a digital twin–a virtual representation of a system or object. Selected as a 2022 Top 100 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, Virspatial has delivered over 100 projects for enterprises in different industries like manufacturing, building and construction, energy and utilities, security, and smart cities across the globe.

The company’s Twinverse digital twin solution combines AI, robotics, 5G, video game technology, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Using digital twins of systems such as assembly lines, Virspatial’s customers can generate data that helps them digitize functions like building resource management. “We visualize anything that has a physical presence and create a digital layer for it. Within this layer, Twinverse aggregates data such as temperature or humidity level from IoT sensors or surveillance images and presents the data in a single platform for customers,” says Dan Lim, senior manager of strategic business & innovation at Virspatial Technologies. “Within the digital twin, users can virtually walk through a building to check electricity consumption, for example, without having to physically go to the building and check the meter.”

In early 2021, Virspatial was contacted by a major Singapore research university that was launching a new 5G digital building but first needed to address data ingestion and sustainability challenges. “This was an important research center to promote 5G technology adoption in smart facilities management,” Lim says. “It was designed as a carbon net-zero facility, so the university needed a solution that would consume less energy.”

Virspatial worked with the university to implement Twinverse throughout the 5G building, creating a digital twin of the full physical environment, both inside and outside. The digital twin solution uses AWS services including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for on-demand compute capacity, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for IoT data storage, and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for database management.

With Twinverse, the university has access to a facilities management dashboard to monitor IoT sensors for air quality, humidity, and temperature in labs and offices. “We set thresholds for each sensor, so when the threshold is met, a notification automatically updates the university that it’s time to change a setting or a sensor,” says Lim. The university has also gained a security dashboard, integrated with a facial recognition system, to automatically check for unauthorized personnel and incoming or outgoing vehicles.

In addition to sensors, Twinverse manages digital twins of robots that perform intelligent waste collection, pick up and drop off hazardous materials, and carry out targeted disinfection and cleaning in labs. “This approach helps the university conserve energy, as these tasks are required only at intervals of a few hours,” says Lim.

The Twinverse solution integrates data from building and security management systems, displaying it in a centralized environment so building personnel get real-time views into both robotic systems and environmental conditions.

By adopting the Twinverse solution on AWS, the university is meeting its sustainability goals, and expects to see up to a 30 percent reduction in operational costs by enhancing energy efficiency and optimizing resource allocation.

The digital twin implementation is also expected to contribute to a 35 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, further supporting the university’s sustainability goals. In addition, AI predictive equipment monitoring via Twinverse will help the university reduce its equipment maintenance and repair costs by up to 30 percent.

Another area of savings is real estate, where the university stands to lower its costs by up to 25 percent. This efficiency is made possible by heat maps, which accurately visualize how much time individuals spend in specific areas and help building managers allocate space more efficiently. Twinverse also helps free up time for building personnel, who no longer need to run routine patrols and can focus on more important tasks.

Virspatial is actively expanding the university’s Twinverse implementation while also working with other industrial customers to create similar projects for buildings, water treatment plants, airports, hospitals, and more. “We look forward to continuing our journey with AWS to give customers better visualization, deeper business insights, and energy savings,” says Lim.