The 21st ISDE International Lectures

ISDE International Lectures, organized by the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE), are a series of online events that feature invited lectures by well-known international experts in the field of Digital Earth. The purpose of the events is to bring international scholars in the relevant research fields of Digital Earth together to exchange academic perspectives, share research results, and disseminate the most cutting-edge and authoritative concepts of Digital Earth.

The 21st ISDE International Lectures

The 21st ISDE International Lectures features the theme “Digitalisation, Decarbonisation and Productivity —BIM, Open Standards and Digital Earth.” Three invited speakers will explore how Building Information Modelling (BIM), open standards, and Digital Earth can address fragmented information across the built environment, enhance productivity, and support decarbonisation and informed decision-making. The session will examine policy and business value, standards and interoperability, and Digital Earth-enabled cross-scale integration, highlighting how trusted and connected information can link individual projects and assets with broader urban, environmental, and policy systems.

Theme: Digitalisation, Decarbonisation and Productivity — BIM, Open Standards and Digital Earth

Date & Time: August 26, 2026, 17:00–18:15 PM (Australian Eastern Standard Time) 

                                                    9:00-10:15 AM (Central European Time)

Organized by: International Society for Digital Earth

Supported by:
International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals
International Journal of Digital Earth
Big Earth Data

Invited Speakers:
Andrew Curthoys (Australasian BIM Advisory Board, Australia)
Jim Plume (buildingSMART Australasia, Australia)
Richard Simpson (International Society for Digital Earth)

Moderator:
Andrew Curthoys (Australasian BIM Advisory Board, Australia)

Programme

Zoom Link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88665994699?pwd=Pwnb1O6fCLjdrOfbbYBdw7XxQO7jAQ.1
ID: 886 6599 4699, Password: 809026

Contact:
ISDE Secretariat (Email: isde@radi.ac.cn, Tel.: 86-10-82178912)

Short Bio of Invited Speakers:

Andrew Curthoys
Australasian BIM Advisory Board

Andrew Curthoys is Chair of the Australasian BIM Advisory Board (ABAB), a member of the International Society for Digital Earth Extended Council, and a member of the University of Queensland School of Architecture, Design and Planning Industry Advisory Board. A qualified town planner, he has more than 38 years of experience in urban and regional planning, major infrastructure, public policy and programme delivery, and governance of public assets across their full lifecycle.

Andrew has held senior roles across economic and social portfolios in the Queensland Government, working in settings where policy, delivery, public accountability and political decision-making intersect. During the past decade, much of his work has focused on digital enablement for major infrastructure and on the institutional changes required to obtain value from better information management. His project experience includes Cross River Rail in Brisbane and Melbourne's Suburban Rail Loop, where he has promoted the integration of digital requirements with asset delivery, ownership and operations.

As Chair of ABAB since 2019, Andrew has helped bring government, industry and academia together around more consistent approaches to BIM and digital engineering across Australia and New Zealand. ABAB's work includes guidance on Asset Information Requirements, BIM process consistency, digital twins and the collection of comparable evidence about BIM benefits. Its objective is practical: improved productivity and asset outcomes through coordinated digital enablement across the built environment.

Andrew's current research and advocacy connect digitalisation with decarbonisation, procurement and whole-of-life asset performance. He argues that carbon cannot be managed credibly without reliable digital information about materials, quantities, decisions and change. His perspective combines public policy, client-side infrastructure experience and industry standards.

Jim Plume

buildingSMART Australasia

Jim Plume is a Director on the Board of buildingSMART Australasia and serves as Secretary/Treasurer. He has worked on digital representations of the built environment since the 1970s and is recognised for connecting building information modelling with geospatial information. His interest began with postgraduate research in the late 1970s, when he developed a prototype three-dimensional building-modelling application on a mainframe computer.

Jim joined the University of New South Wales in 1981 and remained there until 2012. Across three decades of research, teaching and academic leadership, he helped establish computing resources and curricula for the built-environment disciplines. He introduced a compulsory BIM course into a professional programme in 2002 and established a multidisciplinary collaborative BIM design studio in 2004. His later research examined how building models could retain their semantic integrity while being placed within wider urban and geospatial contexts. This included the UrbanIT project and work on Precinct Information Modelling for the CRC for Low Carbon Living.

His standards work spans buildingSMART International, the Open Geospatial Consortium and ISO. He has served on buildingSMART's infrastructure committees, contributed to extending the IFC schema into civil infrastructure, and participated in Australian mirror committees and ISO working groups concerned with information about construction works and geographic information. He was a co-convener of the joint buildingSMART–OGC Integrated Digital Built Environment Working Group and a co-author of its 2020 analysis of IFC, CityGML and LandInfra.

Jim also led the 2015 buildingSMART Australasia and Spatial Industry Business Association position paper on integrating geospatial and built-environment data policy. His work consistently treats interoperability as more than file translation. It requires shared concepts, reliable spatial reference, enduring object identity and governance that allows information to remain meaningful across organisations and over time. His continuing aim is greater and more effective use of openBIM in public and private procurement across Australia and New Zealand.

Richard Simpson
International Society for Digital Earth

Richard Simpson is President of the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) and Founding Director and CEO of Meta Moto. He has more than 30 years of international experience across digital infrastructure, geospatial science, digital engineering and institutional reform. He advises governments, utilities, transport authorities and infrastructure owners internationally in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Asia.

His work includes digital twin and digital thread strategy, BIM and GIS integration, common data environments, asset information governance and spatial platforms for transport, water, energy and telecommunications. Major engagements have included Cross River Rail in Queensland, New Zealand water and transport reform, and digital platform programmes for utilities and infrastructure operators. Earlier in his career, he co-founded New Zealand's first three-dimensional computer graphics company and led the development of spatial platforms used internationally. He later served as an Auckland City Councillor and Chair of Transport, bringing a public decision-maker's perspective to infrastructure technology and governance.

Richard was a founding member of ISDE and has served on its Council since 2006. He commenced his presidential term in September 2025. He led the development of ISDE's current Strategic Vision, adopted by Council in October 2025, which defines twelve interdependent thematic frameworks for an evolving Digital Earth. His scholarship includes co-authoring the Digital Cities chapter in the Manual of Digital Earth and contributing to the influential paper 'Next-generation Digital Earth' in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

He is a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne's Melbourne School of Engineering and at Griffith University's Cities Research Institute. He also serves on boards and advisory initiatives concerned with aerospace, climate technology and regenerative infrastructure, including Kea Aerospace. His work seeks to connect scientific evidence, open standards, engineering practice and institutional responsibility so that digital systems support better long-term decisions rather than isolated technical outputs.

Moderator:

Andrew Curthoys
Australasian BIM Advisory Board

Extended Materials:

About the previous ISDE International Lectures:
https://www.digitalearth-isde.org/list-34-1.html

Andrew Curthoys, Meta-Design for Decarbonised Futures: Digital Optioneering and Scenario Planning in the Built Environment Using Digital Earth Framework 9 (2025).
Andrew Curthoys, Design evolution: digital twins and the value proposition for transport infrastructure megaprojects (2025).
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.1201/9781032663067-8/design-evolution-andrew-curthoys

Jim Plume, The Integrated Digital Built Environment: interoperability standards for geospatial BIM (2018).
https://www.buildingsmart.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/The-Integrated-Digital-Built-Environment-Interoperability-Standards-for-Geospatial-BIM.pdf

Plume et al., Built environment data standards and their integration: an analysis of IFC, CityGML and LandInfra (OGC and buildingSMART International, 2020).
https://docs.ogc.org/dp/19-091r1/19-091r1.pdf

buildingSMART Australasia and SIBA, Integration of Geospatial and Built Environment National Data Policy (2015).
https://eprints.qut.edu.au/215279/

About Australasian BIM Advisory Board
https://www.abab.net.au/

buildingSMART Australasia, current biography of Jim Plume.
https://www.buildingsmart.org.au/what-we-do

buildingSMART International, Industry Foundation Classes and IFC 4.3 / ISO 16739-1:2024.
https://www.buildingsmart.org/standards/bsi-standards/industry-foundation-classes/

Open Geospatial Consortium, Geo-BIM for the Built Environment (2024).
https://www.ogc.org/blog-article/geo-bim-for-the-built-environment/

International Society for Digital Earth, Strategic Vision (2025) and current biography of Richard Simpson.
https://www.digitalearth-isde.org/show-150-407-1.html

University of Queensland, current Industry Advisory Board biography of Andrew Curthoys.
https://adp.uq.edu.au/industry-advisory-board