Genesys International Corporation Ltd has announced that its Varanasi Smart City 3D Digital Twin project has been awarded the SKOCH Award (Gold) 2025 in the Urban Development category under the e-Governance stream. The project was implemented for Varanasi Smart City Limited (VSCL).
Genesys is one of India’s leading mapping companies, and is drawing on its extensive experience in both enterprise-scale and government mapping programmes to play a central role in the development of the India Map Stack. As part of this effort, Genesys has entered into a strategic partnership with the Survey of India (SOI), the country’s national surveying authority, to enhance India’s core geospatial infrastructure. The focus is on the creation of high-fidelity digital twins of major urban areas.
Rather than serving as a visualization tool alone, the Varanasi digital twin was developed as a functional city-wide spatial foundation to support daily municipal operations. The deployment, which covers the entire Varanasi Nagar Nigam area, involved end-to-end project planning, establishment of ground control points for positional accuracy, and extensive data acquisition.
Genesys combined crewed aerial Lidar surveys, optical imagery, mobile terrestrial Lidar, and 360-degree street-level panoramic imagery to create high-accuracy 2D and 3D base maps at 1:500 scale, detailed elevation models, a 3D reality mesh, and an integrated spatial database linking multiple departmental datasets.
The digital twin supports practical use cases such as urban planning, asset management, infrastructure monitoring, public safety, emergency response and flood resilience. It also includes integrated governance modules for areas such as solid waste management, road works, water systems, crowd control and crime monitoring.
The solution has been deployed within the city’s command infrastructure, including the Kashi Integrated Command and Control Centre, and is supported by training, user acceptance testing and ongoing operational assistance.
The SKOCH awards are given by the independent SKOCH Group to recognize people, institutions and projects that contribute to India’s development. They follow a multi-stage evaluation process involving research validation, assessment by an independent jury, and review of measurable governance outcomes.
The SKOCH Award (Gold) 2025 in the Urban Development category recognizes the design, development and deployment of a city-scale 3D urban spatial model created for operational municipal use. According to Sajid Malik, chairman and managing director of Genesys International, the award validates the value of combining high-precision city data with real municipal workflows, enabling departments to plan, monitor and respond more effectively.
Varanasi Smart City 3D digital twin project wins Indian urban development award | GIM International
