City of Amsterdam Wins 2007 BE Award
Wednesday December 19th 2007
Filed Under Bentley
News Release
Press Contact:
Ron Kuhfeld
+1 610 321 6493
ron.kuhfeld@bentley.com
City of Amsterdam Wins 2007 BE Award
IJburg Project Named Top Project in “Geospatial Government” Category
EXTON, Pa. – Dec. 18, 2007 – The Physical Planning Department of the city of Amsterdam has won a 2007 BE Award in the “Geospatial Government” category for its IJburg project. Covering approximately 420 hectares of recently reclaimed land, IJburg is the first integrated and sustainable urban development project of this size to be built in an environmentally sensitive area. Once completed, this multibillion euro project will increase Amsterdam’s housing capacity by 6 percent.
The project includes the design and construction of 18,000 houses as well as apartments, schools, and offices. Together with extensive new beaches, these new facilities will provide shelter for, and support the education, employment, and leisure activities of, 45,000 inhabitants. Work on the site began in 1996 and should be completed by 2020.
The new urban area, which is formed from six artificial islands in the former Lake IJssel, requires a light-rail connection to Amsterdam, roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, utilities, and sports and leisure areas. There will be some 80 bridges over and in between the islands and also connecting IJburg with the city of Amsterdam.
Arjan Molenaar, project coordinator for Amsterdam’s Physical Planning Department, said, “The Bentley portfolio of solutions allows us to use collaborative workflows for land mapping, urban development, infrastructure design, road and rail track design, and much more to design IJburg’s new infrastructure and to model the cityscape in 3D for planning purposes. The breadth of Bentley’s solutions for local government has allowed us to standardize citywide on Bentley geospatial and civil engineering technology.”
Molenaar added, “Within this integrated environment, our design team can easily exchange information with governmental departments inside and outside of Amsterdam as well as with companies in the Netherlands and abroad. Once created, the information is reused many times and can be exported in multiple file types, such as DWG, JPEG, and PDF, to support all members of the project teams as well as third-party suppliers – even those not standardized on Bentley software.”
Bentley solutions being deployed include MicroStation, MicroStation GeoGraphics, Bentley Rail Track, ProjectWise InterPlot, and RoPlan (a land development and management solution specially created for municipalities in the Netherlands). MicroStation 3D functions are being used for the visualization of the new urban skyline in the existing landscape, animation of solar lighting, and visualization of new public areas.
A major challenge of the IJburg project is its location; it is situated in one of the most densely populated areas of the Netherlands and has a complex network of roads, canals, and air corridors. Designs must consider safety aspects such as minimum pass-height of bridges, flooding risks, and the height of buildings on the approach paths to Schipol airport. In addition, the project is in a government-protected European bird-migration zone that cannot be disturbed.
Molenaar concluded, “Bentley provides a software portfolio that is allowing us to execute our project strategy exactly as any municipality would hope to do: in an integrated manner, making the most of collaborative workflows, within time constraints and cost budgets, and with a high-quality result.”
For more details about the city of Amsterdam’s winning project and all of the other 2007 BE Award projects, visit www.be.org/awards. For more details about the Bentley products and solutions used in this project, visit www.bentley.com/Geospatial. For more information on IJburg, visit www.ijburg.nl.
About the BE Awards
The BE Awards of Excellence, which are judged by an independent panel of industry experts and presented at an evening ceremony during the annual BE Conference (www.be.org), honor the extraordinary work of Bentley users improving the world’s infrastructure. These projects set benchmarks for their industries and showcase the imagination and technical mastery of the organizations that created them.
About the City of Amsterdam
Amsterdam is an exciting city of more than 738,000 people. Amsterdam’s appeal lies in its rich cultural heritage, diverse and creative culture, commercial dynamism, and high quality of life. For more information, visit www.iamsterdam.com.
About Bentley
Bentley Systems, Incorporated provides software for the lifecycle of the world’s infrastructure. The company’s comprehensive portfolio for the building, plant, civil, and geospatial verticals spans architecture, engineering, construction (AEC) and operations. With revenues now surpassing $400 million annually, and more than 2400 colleagues globally, Bentley is the leading provider of AEC software to the Engineering News-Record Top Design Firms and major owner-operators, and was named the world’s No. 2 provider of GIS/geospatial software solutions in a recent Daratech research study.
To receive Bentley press releases as they are issued, visit www.bentley.com/bentleywire. For more information, visit www.bentley.com. To view a copy of Bentley’s April 2007 Annual Report online, go to www.bentley.com/April2007annualreport.
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Bentley, the “B” logo, BE, BE Awards of Excellence, MicroStation, MicroStation GeoGraphics, Bentley Rail Track, ProjectWise InterPlot, and RoPlan are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems, Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly-owned subsidiaries. All other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.