The world is facing serious challenges including global climate change, crumbling infrastructure, and a shrinking workforce. Islands of technology are hampering organizations like utilities, telecommunications firms, and local government from streamlining their business processes to improve customer responsiveness, improve quality of services, and deliver new services faster. To address these challenges, the technology industry is developing new technologies including geospatial-enabling, model-driven design, 3D simulation, open source, and Web 2.0. These new technologies provide the foundation for convergence, the integration of architectural and engineering design, geospatial, and 3D simulation technologies which are not only going to change how we design, manage, and operate buildings and infrastructure, but are going to enable intelligent simulation of entire urban environments. The ability to simulate intelligently a city including inside and outside of buildings and underground infrastructure will provide important benefits in the wide range of disciplines including economic development, utilities and telecommunication, urban planning, participatory decision making, security, emergency planning, and first response.
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