Aotearoa Māhanga Matihiko

Team Name

AMM

Team Members

Project Description

Following on from the LINZ 2015-2016 Smart Cities Programme, in particular the Christchurch solution, the concept of creating a 3D Digital Twin [Māhanga Matihiko] virtual view of New Zealand is evolving. One of the key components of such a solution would be the enablement of the spatial visualisation of real time environmental attributes/data (e.g. those collected by local, regional and central government) to better inform the populace. The Digital Twin concept differs from the Christchurch solution where the environmental datasets are accessible via their menu based SmartView app for devices.
The AMM team decided to develop a proposal over the GovHack 2019 weekend based on flood inundation on the central Whanganui metropolitan area. The scenario selected for the proposal was for the impacts of a 1 in 200 year storm event on the availability of the roading network.
The worked example showed the benefits of being able to assess the actual and predicted impacts from the flood event together with constraints in place on the roading network at the same time to keep safe during the flood event.
The outcome demonstrated that by having visibility of the integrated data, a journey from a work location to a home location on opposite sides of the river which ordinarily would have been available was not. The best option identified to keep safe was to proceed straight to an emergency centre.

Data Story

Flood maps for the Whanganui River were sourced from the Horizons Regional Council website and used as the base map for the scenario.
Initially the team explored Stats NZ data for populace work/home locations to add to the base map to develop an example to show the benefits of a Digital Twin for all four challenges but, unfortunately, these were only available at mesh block level.
Whilst Brent Watson from Horizons was in attendance at the event he added value by showing the team where to source real time and predicted flood gauge info from their website. He also directed the team to their time lapse cameras which provide live feeds of the river. Both of these data sources were utilised by the team in developing the example.
Stats NZ advised that they should be able to provide the locations of emergency evacuation centres to add to the base map. However as they only had the Wellington area available their locations were sourced from the Whanganui District Council website instead.
The video presentation was developed using the Adobe Spark online application.