BAY LAYERSONE PLACE. MANY CONNECTED SYSTEMS.
SAN FRANCISCO BAY / A DIGITAL TWIN, UNFOLDED

The place.
The patterns.
The possibilities.

A living landscape, seen through the systems
that shape it. Turn it. Pull it apart. Look closer.

37.81° N122.46° W~33 × 31 KM
GOLDEN GATE
SAN FRANCISCO
MARIN HEADLANDS
BART · TRANSBAY TUBE
ALCATRAZ
ANGEL ISLAND
BAY BRIDGE
THE PRESIDIO
DRAG TO ORBIT · SCROLL TO EXPLORE
A digital twin connects observations, models and feedback—so we can explore what a change might mean.
Assembling a little piece of the world…
BEHIND THE LAYERS

A place is more
than its geometry.

This is a visual explanation of a digital twin: observations form a shared geography, models describe relationships, and feedback lets us learn from change. This prototype illustrates that idea. Its animated systems are not live measurements or validated predictions.

MAPPED

Earth & seabed

NOAA NCEI's elevation and bathymetry mosaic, resampled to a 513 × 513 grid. It includes historical surveys and mixed source datums. Relief is exaggerated for legibility. Bright cyan channels are mapped EPA NHDPlus V2 streams, including intermittent channels; they do not indicate present-day water or flow.

NOAA elevation service ↗
MAPPED

Buildings, roads & vegetation

San Francisco municipal footprints and heights, public street centerlines, and a historical street-tree inventory. Geometry is simplified and sampled for the browser. Coverage is partial and is not a present-day census.

Dataset manifest & provenance ↗

Regional roads and footprints: © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL ↗. Missing building heights use an illustrative two-storey default.

ILLUSTRATED

Motion & connections

Wind, currents, marine fog, building lights, creatures, vehicles, sailboats, flight paths, solar changes and utility connections are animated sketches. The BART crossing is an approximate diagram with illustrative train movement, not a surveyed tube alignment or live train feed. The whale is an occasional artistic visitor, not a sighting. Marin forest, scrub and herbaceous patches follow a historical mapped vegetation classification (2018 landscape, 2019 LiDAR); the dots represent patches, not individual trees. SF park sketches and sculpted landmarks are illustrative. Mapped street trees retain historical point locations.

Built with Three.js. Rendered locally on your device. No account, API key or live data connection is required. Embedding this view ↗