Open infrastructure, built to last.
Why we build the way we do — the principles behind the platform, the ways to deploy it, and how to extend it.
Built to remove the things that usually go wrong.
No vendor lock-in
AGPL-3.0 source means you can always self-host, fork, or exit. Your investment in the platform is portable.
Data sovereignty
Sovereign managed hosting in the region of your choice, or fully on-premise self-hosting. You decide where your data lives.
Cost-recovery economics
We're a non-profit. No profit margin baked in. Any surplus is reinvested in the platform — not extracted.
Multidisciplinary by design
Built from the start to connect BIM, GIS, research, and operations. The platform fits the way institutions actually work.
Connecting people, places, and the data that shapes them.
We're a non-profit foundation building shared infrastructure for digital twins — so institutions, communities, and researchers can collaborate on the buildings, neighbourhoods, and landscapes they share. The platform is the means. Connection is the point.
Two decades of research and practice, grounded in community.
Collab Digital Twins is an independent non-profit, spun out of Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) — the research group whose work has shaped how Canadian institutions adopt BIM, GIS, AR/VR, immersive media, digital fabrication, digital storytelling, and heritage digitization since the early 2000s.
Every director has spent a decade or more inside CIMS — including its founding director and its associate director.
Applied research with national reach and international standing.
Founded at Carleton University's Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, CIMS is one of Canada's leading applied research labs at the intersection of architecture, heritage conservation, and advanced visualization. Its work on Heritage BIM, photogrammetry, and immersive documentation has contributed to international standards and shaped a generation of practitioners.
For nearly two decades, the team has delivered on Canada's most significant projects — including the rehabilitation of Parliament Hill — partnering with the National Research Council, Public Services and Procurement Canada, the Department of National Defence, the Senate of Canada, and Global Affairs Canada, alongside major industry partners. Collab Digital Twins continues that practice — independent, open, and at scale.
Award-winning, internationally recognized.
External endorsement of the platform's open-source, open-standards approach to digital twin infrastructure.
bSI openBIM Awards — Professional Research (2025)
Winner of the Professional Research category at the buildingSMART International openBIM Awards, selected from 129 submissions across more than 50 countries — the first bSI openBIM Award brought to Canada since the program launched in 2014.
Building Transformations Innovation Spotlight Awards (2024)
Winner of both the Research Award and the Best in Innovation Award — recognizing overall excellence across all categories at the 2024 Innovation Spotlight Awards.