Are you watching the most important global sporting event this month in Paris? Then expect not only the world’s best athletes competing for the podium, but also the best of GIS and Digital Twin technologies applied in a sporting event at a grand scale.

British company OnePlan is the official digital twin and mapping partner for this year’s Olympic Games, and its interactive geospatial technology is being used for the Games’ operational planning and workforce training. OnePlan designed sports venues around Paris in the virtual world so they could be built more quickly and efficiently, as well as to support security and transport management during the Games.

For example, the hyper-realistic digital twins of the Aquatics Centre, where artistic swimming, diving, and water polo events will take place, will be used to visualize and plan the venue’s crowd management. The 3D models of other sports venues, like the Eiffel Tower Arena and La Concorde, will also be used to help broadcasters define their camera positions as they capture the sporting events on camera.

“By digitally twinning [the sports venue], it enables the broadcasters to say I can now tell where my camera will go,” said Paul Foster, CEO of OnePlan, in an interview with NBC. “We can simulate the camera’s position, we can also simulate the sun’s position as well so they can see things like lens flare, reflections on surfaces.”

Let the games begin!