The vendor required to provide digital twin platform to define attributes, assess impacts, and develop actionable insights across various urban functions.
- Platform design and architecture
• Develop a comprehensive platform architecture supporting multi-domain data integration (land use, climate emissions, air quality, transportation, infrastructure assets, development plans, housing, noise, heat, flooding, emergency management data, etc.).
• Ensure open API support and system interoperability with existing city applications.
• Design an intuitive user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) for easy usability by diverse user groups, including planners, engineers, policy analysts, city staff, project managers, and relevant operational personnel, ensuring accessibility for all intended users.
• Integrate robust user access controls and features for multi-agency collaboration, breaking down silos between departments.
• Provide scenario analysis results quickly (minutes or less) to enable interactive planning ideation and decision-making.
• The city will provide each respondent a technical architecture questionnaire (TAQ) and the city technical architecture standards for reference.
• Vendors are reviewed on their business solution meeting our city technical standards and TAQ responses.
• Ensure the platform is designed for easy management and model updates as new data becomes available over time (5+ years).
- Data ingestion and management strategy
• Develop capabilities for real-time and historical data ingestion and analysis, including modeling integration for various urban systems, including emergency response scenarios.
• Implement mechanisms for easily scraping data from diverse sources and formats (e.g., microsoft forms, permits).
• Propose medium- and long-term comprehensive data management strategies addressing data access, quality assurance, timely retrieval, continuous updating, and completeness of datasets, specifically outlining approaches for addressing outdated, insufficient, or difficult-to-obtain data (e.g., building-level environmental data, noise data).
• Proposers should also include proposed methods for managing budget resources for data capture and maintenance.
• Integrate current data sources including general city data, GIS data, department travel demand model, transportation management center data, TNCs, fleet data, department asset data, right of way enforcement, development review data, project data, zoning data, land use data, census data, travel surveys, office program and policy datasets, existing sensor data, and additional city, state, and federal data.
• This also includes data from emergency response systems, hazard portals, and historical disaster data, and methods for handling non-real-time economic data.
• Provide examples for integrating new sensor data and assessing future data needs, including those for emergency preparedness and response.
• Develop a plan to update datasets as data is updated or new datasets become available.
• Develop a data gap analysis, detailing where gaps exist in the data that would hinder the ability to perform all desired outcomes.
• Create a plan to address each of these identified data gaps.
- Core modeling and simulation development
1. Comprehensive scenario simulation and forecasting:
• Environmental factors: greenhouse gas emissions, air quality (criteria air pollutants), noise, heat, flooding, snow, and broader climate change impacts.
• This includes the ability to comprehensively quantify the climate impact of infrastructure construction, maintenance, and long-term operations for policy and funding decisions across the city.
• Furthermore, it should track climate impacts from policy work, the expansion of the urban tree canopy, new mobility patterns, and specific planned developments.
• Transportation dynamics: traffic flow, mode shifts, large area plans, evacuation planning, travel times, parking, transit, and micro mobility.
• Energy impacts: grid demand, capacity, and utility data contributing to assessment of building electrification, distributed energy resources (DERS), electric vehicle planning, and the impact of HVAC equipment changes.
• Development and land use: land use changes, capital projects, zoning modifications, private development impacts (including elements like square footage, parking, drainage, landscape, occupancy), and housing trends.
• Emergency management: evacuation planning, disaster response, resource allocation, and route planning.
• Economic factors: key economic influences on city planning, including analysis of policy changes and their economic ramifications.
• Economic impacts of extreme weather events.
• Building and homes: GHG, economic, grid demand, and other impacts of building policy and programming
2. Targeted model integration and development:
• A downtown ambient thermal loop for public and private buildings
• Assessment of Xcel energy's grid capacity for electrification
• Emergency route design and response prediction
• Urban heat island mitigation
• Public space utilization and pedestrian and automobile flow optimization
• Waste management efficiency and environmental impact
• Freight and logistics optimization
• First and last mile connectivity analysis
• Public transit network enhancements
• Electrification readiness assessment (modeling age of buildings, electrical capacity by block or other geographic area
• Commercial to residential building retrofits downtown
3. Performance tracking and assessment:
• Enable equity tracking through defined metrics and reporting features.
• Develop functionality to map planning decisions and outcomes back to key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics.
• Enable assessment of future infrastructure maintenance needs, as well as future needs for emergency response resources.
4. Data integration, application, and visualization:
• Incorporate and integrate different data sources through development and ingestion of APIs or other data transfer mechanisms to enable seamless transition of data an outcome into and out of the digital twin.
• Utilize case study data and generalize findings to replicate and visualize impacts in new scenarios.
• Provide intuitive visualization UX/UI of data and scenario outcomes.
- Platform deployment and validation
• apply the digital twin to specific use cases, such as modeling capital project impacts on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, identifying areas prone to flooding and snow, simulating emergency response scenarios, and evaluating evacuation plans.
• establish rigorous methods to prove the digital twin is working correctly and validate model outputs against real-world data.
• evaluate data quality continuously, adhere to data quality control procedures defined in task 1, report any known data inconsistencies to city staff.
• iteratively refine models and functionalities based on initial deployment and validation results, incorporating feedback from relevant operational personnel.
• vendor technical resources will work with this project’s technical team collaboratively to create required firewall diagrams (enables network communication between systems)
- Training, support and future planning
• Develop a comprehensive training program for initial user groups (planners) and a "train the trainer" module to facilitate broader adoption, including training for relevant operational personnel.
• Outline ongoing technical support mechanisms, including addressing staff time and resource allocation for daily management and maintenance, and for supporting emergency operations.
• Provide recommendations for future technology procurement and long-term staffing needs for the digital twin's sustained operation.
• Develop a strategy for incorporating new technologies, adapting the platform to evolving urban challenges, and considering its potential for future regional adoption or transition to an entity like.
- Budget: $499,500
- Contract Period/Term: 5 years
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: January 8, 2026
