For temporary events such as Christmas markets and state fairs, security is a top priority. Besides conventional security such as video surveillance and access control, digital twins can also play a useful role.
For temporary events such as Christmas markets and state fairs, security is a top priority. Besides conventional security such as video surveillance and access control, digital twins can also play a useful role. This article explores how digital twins can improve security at temporary events.
Temporary events are no stranger to cities and towns. Such events provide a jovial venue for city residents as they spend a fun day with family and friends. Festivities aside, these events can also give a city’s economy a much-needed boost.
Security concerns
Needless to say, security is of utmost importance at temporary events. Especially, it is highly prioritized after certain security incidents that marred these events – the Route 91 Harvest festival shooting in Las Vegas in 2017 and a truck attack on people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice in 2016 are some of the examples. These incidents underscore the importance of security at temporary events.
Deployment challenges
When deploying security systems at temporary events, installers and organizers are faced with various challenges and questions. For example, how many cameras need to be installed? Where to install them? Will the line of sight be blinded? How to quickly understand an unfolding situation? Without an effective tool, these and other questions are hard to address.
How digital twins can help
In this regard, temporary event security teams can turn to digital twins as an effective solution. A digital twin is a digital replica of a real-world object that is continuously updated using real data. For temporary event organizers, they can be helped by digital twins in various ways.
“Temporary events often introduce challenges such as obstructed sightlines created by temporary structures, limited installation time for sensors, changing site layouts and high density visitor flows. Digital twins help planners visualize how stages, booths, barricades and other elements affect surveillance coverage and access routes. They are especially useful for layout validation and situational awareness, allowing teams to evaluate sightlines and potential blind spots in advance – rather than relying on physical trial and error,” said Martin Vojtek, Executive Manager for Coda Spatial at Octave.
Vojtek stresses that digital twins provide value to a wide range of temporary events that require rapid deployment, safety validation and coordinated operations. “These include festivals, parades, concerts, marathons, air shows, fairs, political gatherings, temporary stadium builds and other seasonal or pop up attractions,” he said. “By working from an accurate digital representation of the event site, planners can assess layout decisions, understand visibility constraints and prepare more effectively before the event opens.”
Key benefits
According to Vojtek, digital twins offer several tangible benefits for temporary event planning and operations. These are summarized as follows:
- Improved planning accuracy: Temporary structures can be placed in the digital model to reveal how they affect sensor placement and visibility;
- Better informed security design: Planners can test coverage cones and identify blind spots in a realistic virtual environment;
- Enhanced operational situational awareness: When live detection data is integrated into the twin, operators can view activity spatially instead of interpreting isolated sensor feeds;
- Reduced on site rework: Virtual layout validation prevents costly repositioning or infrastructure adjustments during installation.
Even during a temporary event, digital twins can still play a crucial role in helping organizers address certain security and operational challenges. If layout changes take place during an event, for example due to additional attractions, adjusted walkways or altered security checkpoints, such changes can be quickly modelled and evaluated with the digital twin.
Specifically, the created digital twin can also become the primary visualization environment for LiDAR during live operations. LiDAR refers to light detection and ranging and uses laser light to measure distances and create detailed 3D maps of the environment. When digital twins and LiDAR work together during the event, they will raise operators’ situational awareness and make the event even safer and more secure.
“When LiDAR is incorporated, it provides highly accurate, lighting independent detection of people and objects. Displaying LiDAR detections directly inside the digital twin creates a unified 3D operational environment where alerts, movements and sensor data are shown in context,” Vojtek said. “This spatial fusion improves situational awareness by enabling operators to understand where activity is happening, rather than interpreting isolated alarms or video feeds.”
Octave solutions
Octave is a proposed spin-off from Hexagon that is pending Hexagon shareholders’ approval. According to Vojtek, Octave offers multiple digital twin–related technologies that support both security planning and live operations, each optimized for different parts of the event lifecycle. These technologies include Octave Alto Twin (formerly HxGN Smart Sites), the company’s primary digital twin platform offering an intuitive, real time 3D interface designed to be the main entry point for critical operations; Octave Coda Designer (formerly HxGN dC3 Designer), which is for the planning phase and enables teams to load a digital twin of the event site and design the security layout virtually; and Octave Coda Spatial, which delivers real time situational awareness, visualizing LiDAR detections, camera metadata and other system inputs directly in the 3D environment.