Connected Places Catapult to continue ‘fictional city’ demonstrator project

A digital twin demonstrator project using a ‘complex, fictitious city’ to simulate the effects of climate change will enter its second phase of development under the Connected Places Catapult in September.

Part of the Centre for Digital Built Britain, the National Digital Twin programme launched an interactive tool at COP26 in November to demonstrate how connected digital twins can make energy, water and telecoms infrastructure more resilient to climate change, and that collaboration and data sharing are key to success.

However, the tool – part of the National Digital Twin’s Climate Resilience Demonstrator (CReDo) project – was not allowed to contain real asset data or refer to real world locations for security and confidentiality reasons.

With this in mind, the National Digital Twin programme partnered with geographic information system mapping software firm Esri UK to create a “complex, fictitious city” from scratch in order to simulate the impact of extreme weather.

The firm developed Sunford City to experience a series of severe storms and floods, allow users to test different scenarios, and therefore make decisions to better protect real life infrastructure.

“Collaboration through connected digital twins is key to tackling climate change but digital twins are complex to explain, particularly to non-technical audiences,” Sarah Hayes, head of the National Digital Twin’s CReDo project, said.

“We needed something visual to show during the early stages what CReDo is all about and what we are trying to achieve. When you’re bringing together multiple teams with different skill sets, it can be challenging to communicate effectively.”

Second phase

While the project’s first stage wrapped in March 2022, a second phase is continuing under Connected Places Catapult after CReDo moved from the National Digital Twin programme at the Centre for Digital Built Britain.

Hayes added that findings from the demonstrator are essential to show what kind of interventions a digital twin might consider in the future and assessing their impact.

“The images help make the point about resilience from a system point of view, rather than a sector point of view,” she said. “We needed pictures like this to get the point across quickly and easily.

“The Sunford City application helped demonstrate how connecting datasets and digital twins across organisations and sectors is vital to securing future infrastructure resilience.

“The objective was to not only help connect and engage with external stakeholders but also internal teams, to help crystallise the vision and concept of what we are producing.”

Working with Anglian Water, UK Power Networks and BT, the Connected Places Catapult – which intends to fund the project for the next two years – is seeking a supplier to help deliver the data engineering and core functionality, including descriptive data visualisation, required to scale up the connected digital twin.

CReDo aims to be a connected digital twin of critical infrastructure that helps the cross-sectoral infrastructure network adapt to climate change and improve climate resilience. At present this covers infrastructure across the water, energy and telecoms sectors, but long-term ambition is to capture additional sectors, at national scale.

Utility Week Innovate, in collaboration with Utility Week Live aims to discover and promote innovative approaches to tackle front line business challenges through case studies, technical/project studies, networking, and live content. Be recognised as a key solution provider and meet your target audience face-to-face at UWL23. Find out more about exhibiting