Urban Simulation: French Deep-Tech Company GeoTwin
Launches Platform to Revolutionize Decision-Making
Paris, 23/02/2021 — Following two years of research and development, GeoTwin has announced the release of its next-generation geographic and behavioral intelligence software for modeling, simulating, and predicting travel and consumption patterns within urban areas. The software is available online at https://geotwin.io.
Founded in 2019, the Paris-based startup has built a human-centred global intelligence platform designed to facilitate decision-making for players in transportation, urban planning, real estate, energy, and retail. The goal is to allow users in these fields to analyze and visualize how, where, when, and why trips are made, as well as to predict their future evolution. All this can now be accomplished in a fast, simple, and cost-effective manner.
Based in France and Singapore, GeoTwin addresses the urban mobility market worldwide, particularly in Europe, Asia and the United States. To compete with its American counterpart Replica, the French start-up intends to rely not only on the quality of technology that offers the same algorithmic capabilities but also on the European regulations guaranteeing personal data protection. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) indeed creates a strict regulatory framework that allows GeoTwin to provide clear assurances to its customers about the data it uses. This comes from open-source databases (for the most part) or from a limited number of private sources (cell phones for example), and is never used individually.
Combined with artificial intelligence and multi-agent modeling techniques, this real-life data is used by GeoTwin to create “digital twins” that are statistically representative of real populations and their behaviors. That allows the platform to accurately represent existing situations and to simulate an unlimited number of future evolutionary scenarios and to make decisions based on more than 27 performance criteria such as CO2 emissions, hourly or daily traffic, socio-demographic profile of travelers and visitors, or the efficiency of the deployed mobility services.
GeoTwin’s software is marketed under an annual license. As soon as users created an account, they gain access to a wide range of ready-to-use functionalities designed for experts (researchers, analysts) and decision-makers, with or without technical skills. The software offers construction of new models or use of existing models, a collaborative mode, integration of one’s own business data, definition of scenarios to be explored, visualization of simulation results in cartographic form and dashboard, and more.
This is obviously the case for operators involved in urban planning and development (public authorities, urban planning agencies, etc.). It’s also the case for all mobility players in the broad sense: public transportation, taxis, alternative transportation (scooters and bicycles), electromobility, etc. However, this tool also addresses problems professionals in many other sectors encounter, such as in construction or real estate (e.g., simulating the attractiveness of a new housing program), energy, physical commerce (evolution of customer flows) or advertising (studies of audiences by advertising location).
Thanks to continuously updated data, the software can also help actors identify strong signals in the evolution of people’s behaviors or test certain breakthrough innovations such as the deployment of autonomous vehicles or flying cabs.
GeoTwin also offers its clients personalized consulting and study missions. For instance, in collaboration with the Ile-de-France region and Renault, the start-up carried out a feasibility study for the deployment of an autonomous shuttle system during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
GeoTwin was founded in 2019 by Göknur Sirin-Jubin, who holds a PhD in complex systems and is a former mobility engineer. She is one of the few female founders of a deep-tech startup in this sector. The young company now has a dozen employees in Paris and Singapore, all of whom come from leading laboratories in the fields of transportation, urban planning, and software engineering.
After an initial fundraising of €2.2 million in the pre-seed stage supported by BPI France and Renault Venture Capital, the company is preparing a new round of financing from international investors — particularly in Asia and the United States.
About GeoTwin
GeoTwin develops and markets a multi-agent SaaS software platform for geographic and behavioral intelligence for the analysis of urban mobility. Using data from real populations in a given geographical area, GeoTwin allows modeling, visualizing, simulating and predicting travel and consumption trends according to customizable scenarios, in a simple and fast way. Accessible to expert users such as researchers and scientists as well as to non-technical decision-makers, this tool especially targets the urban-planning and development sectors, as well as those of transportation, construction, real estate, energy, and physical commerce.
Founded in 2019 in Paris, GeoTwin also has a Singapore office. Since its initial pre-seed fundraising of €2.2 million, the company has been marketing its tool under license since February 2021 and supports its clients in customized consulting and research missions.
