 Hi and welcome to the first Intergeo podcast of 2022 and we are convinced that in line with Intergeo's motto, inspiration for a smarter world, this is exactly what the global geo community has been waiting for, inspiration and smart knowledge from this podcast. And as the topics of digital twins and BIM and the construction industry will play a central role at the by now 28th intergeo this October in Essen, we will start of course with this topic and a woman who and I hereby check the opportunity to say this is for me, my Dr. BIM, she is the one and only Ika Mai from Locklap Consulting. Hello Ika, hello and welcome. Nice to have you here. How are you? Hello to these. Thank you. I'm very well. Thank you for that very warm welcome. Yeah. Yeah. I know you for several years and we're always talking about the context of BIM and also the digital twins and for me you're my Dr. BIM, you are. So our topic today is data is more like soil, not like oil. So you inspired us to this headline today and how the added value of the digital twin grows through sharing and when it comes to digital twins, your name comes up in this context for many, many years you have been a guest and expert at intergeo as a speaker, a panel participant, but also as a solution provider in the context of the application and creation of digital twins. So many will know you in this context of BIM Smart City and digital twins and for those who don't, the following brief introduction may help. You hold a doctorate in geography. In 2015 you were in charge of the development of the step-by-step plan as a digital planning and building on behalf of the Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure. And since 2018 you are playing a key role in accompanying the update of Deutsche Bahn's BIM strategy. You are CEO of the company LuckLab Consulting and specialized in creating 3D digital twins and bringing them into use. So Ilka, let's start. We have a little warm-up. So please answer the next three questions in one sentence or less. Is that okay? It's okay, Denise, but can we just say one thing before we start? That's okay because you talk about digital twins and now you just mentioned 3D digital twin and we all have probably some sort of understanding what we mean by that, but yours, Denise, might be completely different to my imagination of a digital twin. So some people see that as a point cloud or 3D mesh. Other people think it's only alphanumeric data. And my understanding also now in our conversation, when I talk about a digital twin, I always mean a 3D model. So that's different to other people, but also I mean an object-based 3D model that has a proper data structure in the background. So that's just something I wanted to clarify before we start and warm-up. Okay, thank you very much for the introduction. So let's start with the first question, you know, warm-up. So on a scale of one, extremely unlikely to 10, with absolute certainty, how likely is that that you will make it into the history box as a digital twin pioneer or Mrs. Bim? Okay, likelihood, but for me personally, as a person, I think not very likely, so 0 to 1 maybe. But when we talk about lock-clap and what we do, I would hope that is a 10. Okay, perfect. So with your company, yes, I say with you as a person too, you will. So second question, what are your core skills in relation to digital twins? What's your strength? My strength. Well, from the feedback that I got from other people, it is being able to explain the added value, but also the relationships between digital twins and, for example, Bim in a comprehensible and understandable way. Okay, third question, what fascinates you about digital twins? How beautiful they are. Have you looked at one? They are stunning. But that's not the only thing. I think it is really the added value and also the wide variety of use cases that you can think of, and it never seems to end. There's always something else that someone thinks of that they can also be used for and add value all the time. Thank you very much for the warm-up. So let's go now a little bit deeper because you see the enormous potential for improvement in the 3D twins and that pushes you. So now let's get into the detail. In the pre-talk with my colleague Monika, you inspired her to this headline of today's podcast, data is more like soil and not like oil. So what do you mean by that? Okay, first of all, I can't take credit for this quote. It's not from me, but I think it is put on. And I heard it and learned it when I did my Smart City professional education program at Imperial College London from Professor Gu and that inspired me too. So what does it mean? So what do we associate with oil? Well, a lot of people and organizations rely on it and there's a lot of money to be made from it. And that's also true of data. So you kids there and some people do, data is like oil. However, oil, as we know, is a finite resource. The more people use oil, the faster it runs out. Data is just the opposite. It keeps growing. So the more people share their data, the greater the potential and also is the value that we all get from the data. So that makes it more like soil. One example for that. So for example, I love Google Maps. So when I plan a trip, I no longer listen to the traffic radio only every 30 minutes to know if there is a traffic jam and how long it will take me to get somewhere. So what I do is I take Google Maps and I just open it and click on the traffic and then I see it exactly. And Google knows how many mobile phones are where they are and how fast they go along. And that's how they can calculate if there's a traffic jam and how long it will take me to get down this road. So if only one person would share that information, I'd say 100 people would share that information, it wouldn't work. It would be a very, very limited value. But because it's millions of people sharing the location of their mobile phones, we can have services on the basis of that which are really, really valuable. Thanks for that example. I love that and that the value of data grows when it's used. So that makes sense. But all too often when we talk about data, we talk about silo structures, the isolated availability of data detached from other departments or company processes. So but car of the digital twins lies in thinking processes together, doesn't it? So maybe is the human being an obstacle in the success story of the digital twins? Makes it too simple. I think it's not just humans holding us back there. So if you think of an organization, every organization has to set up and manage itself according to its target operating model, let's say, or purpose. And we can think of that like a pyramid. Top of the pyramid is the strategy. So the strategy sets out or the vision, sets out how the organization will reach its aims and meet the target operating model. And below the top and the strategy as the next horizontal layer is since the governance. So the governance is where the framework condition is set out for the implementation of the strategy. And below the governance are the processes because the processes is what we need to comply with the guidelines or governance to implement the strategy. Below the process is the next layer down is the technology because we all need tools, maybe software, we need data. So we need something that helps us to work and live the processes that implement the fine work and strategy. And at the bottom of the pyramid where it's the widest, that's where the people are. So people need to use the software and the data and use the processes, et cetera, et cetera. So it's all linked together. So these are the horizontals of the pyramid. Now we have the verticals. The verticals could be different business units, for example, and they all have their own targets and that's the silos you're talking about. So very often in the verticals, we have responsibilities, budgets, risks, business risks, et cetera. So the idea now is the stronger the horizontal layers are, the more freedom you can give to the business units to act within their own silos. However, when you now think about digitization that comes along and changes everything, it doesn't change just that one layer of technology, so software and data. It has to change the processes. We need to think about the governance. We need to think about, for example, data security, data protection. So all of that needs to change. Then we need to change when we change the tools. We need to train people, we educate people and we need to communicate the change, et cetera, et cetera. So it is quite complicated and it takes a long time, especially for a big organization with lots of systems, et cetera, et cetera. So just saying that it's the people holding us back and wouldn't be fair because there's a lot of change to be done and all needs to come together and I think this is the problem. Okay. Thank you very much for that explanation and we see how many different layers it has to come to that change process of digital twin way of thinking in companies and associations and so on. So let's have a look at digital twins with kind of artificial intelligence in them, superior to human decision making. So are they superior when artificial intelligence? Is that just kind of science fiction? Okay. Wow. So I think when it comes to like lightning fast analysis of numbers of facts as a basis for a decision and obviously yes, systems, computers, digital twins, whatever probably are superior there. But decision making, especially human decision making is much more than just that, which very quickly leads us into an ethical debate, doesn't it? Okay. Do you have an example for that? Yeah. So one example is quite widely discussed when you think of autonomous driving and again there you can think of lots of digital twins. So there is a digital twin of the road network, for example and then there's a car and you need to train the car to be able to drive autonomously. However, when you put that into real world and then let's say there is a conflict. So the car detects or senses detect that there's a collision is inevitable, will happen and then you've got just one choice to the left and there's maybe a person with a baby push chair and on the right there's a person elderly person with a walking stick. Where does the car go? Decision to be made. The car can calculate and make a decision. Okay. How can we cope with that as people, as humans to make that decision? Okay. Ilka, with Locklub you create digital twins and yeah, can you give an example of why digital twins are more like soil and less like oil, as this quote suggests? Yeah, we can. So our digital twins, they are data integrators. You can think of them as really as a data integrator. So as I said at the beginning and this is why I made the point they always have a structure, a data structure that was contained objects and that object structure enables them, enables the clients or whoever to connect the digital 3D model with other systems and databases. In doing so, what we do is we don't copy data from other systems. We leave the data where it sits and where it belongs but you make it accessible through the digital twin in a very intuitive way. Just let me give you one other example. Here imagine a building management system which has lots of sensors and rooms and sensor data and they all appear to the facility manager as a long list of rooms and sensors, maybe a dashboard. So from the dashboard you can tell there is a room with a certain number and out in the room there's a certain temperature and humidity and whatever there is. So that's all data. Now let's say there is an alert because the temperature has gone up to a concerning value and the alarm goes off. So the facility manager then has to make a decision and we're back to decision making. What do you decide? You're not on site. You can't just go upstairs and walk into the room but you have to make a decision. Do you evacuate the building or the room or the floor? With the dashboard it's quite hard. Just imagine you have the same information in a three-dimensional context. It's the virtual room and you see all the temperature, the humidity, et cetera. You have a paper sensor, you see there is no person in the room at the moment. What you can also do in the 3D model you can walk out, go into the room next door and just check in the virtual model are people sitting in the room next door and on the other side. How many people are there in total? You can also see is there any critical infrastructure or technical rooms or what else is around there? So there's a lot more information and it's in a much more intuitive and accessible way for the human brain to process the data to come to a better decision. And that's exactly what our 3D models do. They give you a better understanding of the information that would otherwise be locked into lists or spring sheets or values but the human brain can't process that quickly. So Ilke, thank you very much for sharing that vision with us and that strategy. You're working on that platform to make the data accessible to change the way we work, we live, we think in companies and associations and I think you also have a good picture for that. Yes, I do and that is really this is our vision for the platform that we are creating. Just imagine that in a few years time someone working in asset management will say to his colleague, her colleague can you imagine we were running the whole estate and all these technical assets here simply on technical places and long lists and spreadsheets and that person then says, oh yes, you're right, we didn't have 3D models at the time. I can't even imagine how we worked back then but actually it's not that long ago. And then the other person says I can't even imagine how to do my job without the digital twin hub and someone else says, no, no way. You can't imagine that. So this is our vision that this conversation happened say in three years from now. Okay, thank you very much. So Ilka, in conclusion, what do we need to integrate that vision of working with digital twins more and more as tools in our real world? Well, okay, you could just come to us and we will do it for you and you become a customer and a client on the digital twin hub on our platform. But I think it's a lot, the basics is really that people start to understand the value of the data they've got and start unlocking that by giving more people access to it in a secure, safe way obviously but also maybe really giving the data that understandable and intuitive interface that the 3D model can provide that would be my vision. Thanks for that vision and I see we have arrived at the commercial break so head over to LockLab as Ilka just mentioned and join that digital twin hub. Yeah, of course, we will do. Thanks for fascinating us too about the work you do and your ideas about digital twins and what they can do. Yeah, this is so interesting to share the thoughts about the applications and how they change the world we live to, we think we work and it's always a pleasure to have you here as an expert and I hope to see you in Essen, Ilka, this year we can meet in presence. You will for sure. So thank you very much, Ilka, bye.