There are now two Varanasis.
It’s a digital representation of the city, linked to real-world data and capable of being updated, analysed and used to simulate scenarios. One is the ancient city of temples, ghats and crowded, labyrinthine lanes along the Ganga. “And it’s not only about floods. We’ve done impact analysis for roads being widened across the city, including Dal Mandi. We could tell the PWD in advance how much built-up area would need to be demolished and exactly which properties would be affected,” he adds. Genesys’s mapping there combines LiDAR, drone capture and ground surveys, documenting structures, lanes, utilities and tenement details.
The other is its digital twin — a 160-sq-km digital replica built from LiDAR, aerial and drone imagery and 360-degree street-level scans, captured using light aircraft, backpack-mounted scanners and vehicles. We believe revised assessments could raise municipal property tax collections by as much as 50 per cent. “The digital twin also helps us spot encroachments, and when we compare the new 3D data against our older records, it shows buildings that were residential a few years ago and are now running as hotels or commercial spaces, which means the property tax can be revised accordingly.
“It also creates an evidentiary baseline,” Malik says. “What was measured, where it stood and who occupied it are recorded once and referenced across the redevelopment lifecycle, bringing transparency to the process and narrowing the ground for disputed claims,” he adds.
A detailed 3D model, repeatedly updated through aerial surveys, can make that visible.” Singapore has been building Virtual Singapore, a data-rich 3D model that lets planners test interventions before they happen, modelling their effect on traffic, population and environmental conditions. The UK’s National Digital Twin Programme offers a third lesson: digital twins need shared standards, interoperability, clear governance and long-term maintenance. Built around the UK’s Gemini Principles, it allows different organisations to build and manage their own models while sharing data safely. Anup Jindal, CEO, RMSI, a Noida-based geospatial technology firm that has worked with governments and cities worldwide, talks about a more structural problem: Indian cities are divided among multiple agencies, all keeping their own, often conflicting, datasets. Two hours of rainfall can halt an entire city. His advice: a digital twin doesn’t need to be a monolith. Cities should adopt a phased rollout, starting with high-impact applications like flood management, property tax mapping and traffic flow.”Departments miss thousands of built-up square feet hidden behind upper-storey extensions.
The lesson: officials can ask “what if” before anything changes in the real city. “Cities need common standards for their data, and an apex city-level agency with the statutory authority to develop, operate and maintain the digital twin,” he says. Jindal says India’s immediate challenge is one of survivability rather than sustainability: “India’s rapidly growing cities are dealing with severe flooding, traffic congestion, housing shortages and infrastructure stress.
Because officials simply kept doing things the old way, bengaluru made digital property maps over a decade ago, he notes, and very little changed,. “But I’d be reluctant to call this a revolution in governance. Digital twins show officials the gaps in their own infrastructure, but finding a problem and fixing it are different things. “ Digital twins don’t solve Indian urban governance — they take away urban planners’ biggest excuse, that no one knew what was going on. After that, governance depends on institutions, incentives and political will, all of which are outside the realm of digital twins.”
It is a revolution in information,” he says.
