The UN Sustainable development goal 4 aims to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.’ We are always looking for new ways to inspire the next generation of engineers in the engineering sector. Recently Atkins UK began working closely with the Digital Engineering Technology and Innovation (DETI) Inspire team at the University of West of England to explore accurate spatial data as a digital twin, delivered via the popular game Minecraft. The Atkins Geospatial Team built a custom FME process to convert Ordnance Survey data into a to-scale Minecraft world, allowing highly detailed local communities to be created – the UK’s wild west in Minecraft. Through in-game interaction with this recreated Bristol, children from local communities can explore the familiar parts of their community in a new way, using them to frame engineering challenges, piquing their interest, and giving them the power to reshape where they live to enable a net-zero future. “Giving young people access to these places and the power to reshape them, even if it is just in Minecraft, offers them the opportunity to imagine their world as being different from what it is now. We hope that planting the idea that we can have some control over our environment will lead some young people to think about the relevance of design and engineering to their lives, and then perhaps on to thinking of themselves as designers and engineers of the future.” - Liz Lister, STEM Ambassador Hub West England.

1. Ready Player One
Inspiring the next generation of engineers and
scientists with FME and Minecraft

2. FME
User
Conference
20
22
Atkins – SNC Lavalin, Senior GIS Consultant
Chartered Geographer (GIS), FME Certified
Professional with nearly 10 years in engineering
consultancy.
Atkins – SNC Lavalin, GIS Consultant
GIS consultant and FME certified professional,
specialising in data automations.
Lewis Mould
Sam Collier

3. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Agenda
● STEM – What is it? Why is it Important?
● Gaming in STEM
● Minecraft
● Under the hood – The FME
● Technical Challenges
● So what?

4. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
What is STEM?

5. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
● Foundations of technological society
● Logical thinking, numerical reasoning and
spatial skills
● Makes learning fun
● Higher salary possibilities1
1. Deming and Noray (2018), STEM Careers and Technological Change

6. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Gaming in STEM
Place your screen capture here
● Increases student engagement
● Increases subject knowledge and
understanding1
● Learning through experience
● Doesn’t feel like you’re learning!
1. Hobbs et al., 2019. Using Minecraft to engage children with science at public
events

7. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
The Project

8. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
The West in Minecraft
● Developed by the DETI Inspire team in collaboration with the Science Hunters .
● Funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering
● Based in the West of England (areas surrounding Bristol, Bath, etc.)
● Teach student about Digital Engineering and Engineering design process
● Atkins created the Minecraft world for use in the sessions.

9. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Minecraft

10. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Minecraft – What is it?
Minecraft is a sandbox videogame developed
by Mojang Studios. Players explore a blocky,
procedurally-generated 3D world. There is no
real end goal – Players can mine, build and
create to their hearts content.
● Official ‘Best-selling video game of all time’
● 238 million copies sold
● 140 million monthly active users (April
2021)
● Purchased by Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5
billion
1. Current cover art for Minecraft game as of 2021

11. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
The ‘symbology’ is
controlled by the Block
ID Attribute.
Examples:
Stone - 1
Grass - 2
Water - 9
Unusual coordinate system
where Y and Z are swapped
The effective world
limit for X/Z is
-30,000,00 to
+30,000,000
X Z
Y
0,0,0
Why use Minecraft? - The Spatial Link
Coordinates – Attribution – Symbology
Its a GIS Dataset!
All objects are made of or
contained within a 1x1m box
(block)

12. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Under the Hood - The FME

13. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Blockify!
Process using FME
Transformations
Spatial Data
Incoming GIS datasets
for the target area
Play
Output a working
Minecraft world
These ‘Worlds’ can be created without changing the underlying game engine.
How is it done?

14. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Input Datasets – UK Ordnance Survey
Topography Layer
The main dataset - Detailed areas without
gaps
OS Terrain 5
Detailed DTM dataset
Highways Network - Roads
Additional road information (Heights)
Water Network Layer
Additional water information (Widths)
Greenspace Layer
Additional natural area information
Building Heights
Building height add-on for Topography
layer

15. FME
User
Conference
20
22
The FME Workbenches

16. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Working With Point Clouds & Rasters

17. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Building 3D Bridges using a 2D dataset
as a base
Extrapolating missing data from
underneath bridges
Technical Challenge - Bridges

18. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Assign each building a height of base
value and a building height value
Avoid heavy 3D processing by ‘stacking’
copies of a point cloud on-top of each
other.
Technical Challenge - Buildings

19. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Using FME ‘PointCloudThinner’ to
produces ‘random’ landscape features.
Using the game engine to fill in the gaps,
and do some of the heavy lifting
Technical Challenge - Landscapes

20. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
The Final Output
The final output produces a too-scale
representation of the target area.
The worlds can then be brought to life
even more by Minecraft builders to add
in high quality landmarks (Clifton
Suspension Bridge – Bristol UK)
Place your screen capture here

21. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Benefits

22. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
● To date, nearly 4000 school-age students
engaged with The West in Minecraft
● Up to Feb 2022;
● 53% were from areas of high deprivation
● 42% female
● Empowerment

23. Thank You!
Lewis.Mould@atkinsglobal.com
Sam.Collier@atkinsglobal.com

24. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Please Share Your Session Feedback
Log in & navigate to the
agenda. Select the
session you attended
Scroll down to “Session
Feedback”
Download EventMobi app
Event code: fmeuc
Click “Launch App”
Fill out the survey
and submit