Bentley Acquires Agency9 to Realize Digital Twins for Every City

Bentley Systems Incorporated, the leading global provider of comprehensive software solutions for advancing the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure, today announced the acquisition of Agency9, based in Stockholm. Agency9 has already provided nearly half of Sweden’s larger municipalities with city-scale digital twin cloud services for city planning and related web-based 3D visualization. Since 2012, Agency9 has taken advantage of reality meshes created by Bentley’s ContextCapture reality modeling software as the digital context for visualizing urban infrastructure assets represented in GIS data, terrain surveys, and BIM models. Bentley’s new iTwin™ cloud services, introduced at the conference, add digital alignment and change synchronization for infrastructure engineering digital twins, and will enable OpenCities Planner(formerly Agency9 CityPlanner)to uniquely serve urban planning requirements at fuller levels of detail.

Phil Christensen, Bentley’s senior vice president, reality modeling said, “Our many city users globally have been asking for the useful capabilities which Agency9 has successfully implemented throughout Sweden, to take further advantage of their reality modeling programs. In fact, when we combine Bentley ContextCapture’s 3D surveying advancements (based on hybrid aerial, UAV, and ground-based imagery) with our Connected Data Environment (CDE) technologies for geospatial-to-BIM integration, we make city-scale digital twins as a cloud service broadly accessible. Ultimately synchronizing reality and ‘virtuality,’ OpenCities Planner offers the perfect web solution to enable every city in going digital.”

Håkan Engman, CEO of Agency9, said, “Now that we’re part of Bentley, we’re confident about achieving the full global potential of Agency9’s innovations. My colleagues and I, and our forward-thinking users in the Nordics, have been noted for pushing the envelope of geospatial integration and visual performance to new levels of detail. Now, as contributors toward unique city-scale digital twin cloud services from Bentley, we can foresee the realization of our users’ vision to advance from urban planning to improving cities’ asset performance.”