Digital Technology Shaping the Future of Place-Based Decision Making

This article is written by one of our partners, SimAnalytica

Digital technology is transforming how we approach vital investment decisions in decarbonisation, climate resilience, and regional regeneration. Traditional tools like spreadsheets and PDFs can’t keep pace with the complexity and urgency of today’s challenges.

We explore how digital innovation is reshaping the future of planning for a more sustainable, resilient world.

Generational Investment Decisions

Hundreds of billions of pounds will be spent in the coming decades to transform the places we live through the implementation of decarbonisation, climate mitigation, and adaptation policies. Almost every aspect of our lives will be impacted – from domestic and industrial building regeneration to shifts in modes of transportation, the energy transition, and more. The transformation must be equitable while supporting the regional economic regeneration and growth society needs to prosper.

Whether in the public or private sector, these generational, potentially life and death investment decisions are highly complex, interconnected, and interdependent with almost infinite combinations yielding myriad possible outcomes, all dependent on uncertain and dynamic assumptions about possible conditions in the future – whether climate predictions, behaviour change impact, or economic projections.

With so much at stake, the risks of choosing the wrong combination or initiating unintended consequences are incredibly high.

Leaders tasked with making these decisions want to put data at the centre of their decision-making process. Yet they face three critical challenges when they attempt to do so.

Three Critical Challenges

An attempt to develop a data-based approach typically means the extensive use of decades-old, general-purpose spreadsheet technology combined with business intelligence dashboards, .PDFs and, .PPTs.

This business-as-usual approach faces three critical challenges:

1. The required data sets are voluminous, complex, and disconnected across multiple systems and locations. This means that teams spend more than 60% of their time on lower value tasks such as sourcing and preparing data, not converting data into actionable insight
2. Policy analysis is siloed, time-consuming, and expensive. Separated by discipline, such as transport, economic regeneration, climate, housing, energy, resource-constrained in-house specialists can take weeks and months to report their analysis, with hundreds of thousands of pounds spent with external consultants in an attempt to develop a holistic perspective
3. Optioneering is limited with no “system level view” of place. As a result of these data and analysis challenges, teams are massively constrained by time, cost, and resources leaving them unable to undertake an extensive analysis of alternatives or develop a system-level view of place. The work that is done is static, typically represented in a document format that is unable to dynamically adapt as the situation of the ground evolves or data and analysis are updated.

Transforming Business-as-Usual

Digital technologies and methods – common data environments, 3D modelling and simulation, digital twins, AI/ML etc – that have been used in other sectors like aerospace and defence and automotive for decades, are now beginning to shape the future of place-based decision making.

Independent return on investment studies have revealed that in the public sector planning process, benefit cost ratios in excess of 20:1 can be achieved through the use of 3D modelling alone. Combined with digital twins, simulation and AI, the impact is even greater, transforming business-as-usual and enabling leaders to make better decisions faster and at orders of magnitude lower cost. While the journey of transformation is just beginning, SimAnalytica is pioneering the application of these digital technologies across the public and private sectors.

Applications Built on a Common Platform

SimAnalytica provides a suite of place-based and use-case specific applications that are built on a common digital platform called Compass: Engine^TM, created from a decade of foundational research and development.

Key features include:

• Dynamic, interactive 2D, 3D and photorealistic visualisations combined with AI-based automated charting and report generation for compelling stakeholder engagement.

• A suite of embedded, automated and coupled analytics, models and simulations combined with AI/ML and digital twins enables limitless scenario optioneering.

• Best-in-class geospatial data from partners like Ordnance Survey and Esri ensures data accuracy and quality.

• Pre-populated with the static and streaming place-based data you need – saving time and unlocking team capacity.

SimAnalytica’s Applications in Action

Compass: Transport enables teams to rapidly optioneer transport network and mobility interventions in the context of emissions, carbon, socio-economics and equitable regeneration. The solution is helping organisations like Sunderland City Council internalise transport scheme evaluation capabilities, unlock team capacity, dramatically compress time to insight and save hundreds of thousands of pounds on external transport consultancy fees.

With Compass: Climate teams can automatically visualise environmental data and assess climate change hazards and risks for people, place and assets under a wide range of potential future climate states. Organisations ranging from local authorities to major infrastructure programmes like HS2 are using Compass: Climate’s embedded data and automated climate analytics to visualise and quantify place-based climate hazards and risks at a granular and aggregated level and make strategic investment decisions that protect the vulnerable and save millions in climate-related maintenance efficiencies.

Users of Compass: Energy, an energy transition, local area energy plan and low-carbon regeneration techno-economic feasibility assessment application, include the Greater South East Net Zero Hub and Electricity North West. They are able to combine extensive place-based data with energy network information to facilitate the rapid techno-economic feasibility assessment of the energy transition – from local area energy plans, community projects and mobility hubs to the ability of places to support inward investment and regeneration opportunities.

Compass: Carbon provides a holistic assessment of place-based decarbonisation intervention scenarios in the context of region-wide initiatives and local domestic and industrial decarbonisation plans. Places like North Northamptonshire County Council have used Compass: Carbon to identify optimum pathways to accelerate their decarbonisation journey and develop a local industry decarbonisation plan.

In addition to standard applications, SimAnalytica offers configuration services to build solutions using the power of Compass: Engine^TM that are tailored to your specific place-based decision-making needs.

Learn More

If you would like to learn more about how SimAnalytica’s digital technology is shaping the future of place-based decision-making download the e-book here [link to be provided], explore our website www.SimAnalytica.com and follow us on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/company/simanalytica. 

We will also be exhibiting at ReGeneration Earth at the Royal Armouries in Leeds on 18th and 19th June 2025. Come and find us for a chat in the start-up zone at stand 82.