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Northumbrian Water is working with Newcastle University on a virtual system, which could help protect people and the environment during an incident.
The water company said the move could see it bring the “future to life”. The two organisations have come together to progress an idea around incident response, which came out of one of the 13 “sprints” held at Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival earlier this year.
They are exploring the potential of using “digital twin” technology – a virtual model of the real world, to help predict the impact of a burst pipe or heavy rainfall.
The “Twincident” idea would allow Northumbrian Water to run simulations of an area during an incident to show what could happen over a 24-hour period, in just a couple of minutes.
The company said this would be used to understand whether homes and businesses are in danger of being flooded, or environments being polluted. It would then be able to prioritise the appropriate response actions.
Chris Jones, research and development manager at Northumbrian Water, said: “During an incident, it’s really important to identify problems early, in order to make the best decisions and reduce the impact on our customers and the environment.
“Harnessing the power of digital twin technology to progress our ‘Twincident’ idea would help us to have an even better insight and response to incidents, and we’re really excited about working in partnership with Newcastle University to make it happen.”
Newcastle University′s Chris Kilsby, professor of hydrology and climate change in the school of engineering, added: “We’re delighted that we will be able to put our research to good use working with Northumbrian Water.
“Twincident is an excellent way of bringing together our new computer models of flooding with real time monitoring data, to enable much better decisions and responses in an important real-world application.”
The idea was developed further at Northumbrian Water’s “Day of Innovation” last week (18 September), which took place at Hanningfield Reservoir in Essex.
The one-day event was held following Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival in July and was an opportunity to develop and test the big ideas that came out of it.
Northumbrian Water Group (NWG) recently announced it aims to be a “game changer” when it comes to tackling leakage.
Dr Eliane Algaard will join NWG as a water director on 8 October from National Rail and will have a UK “leading leakage target” in her sights, the company said.
In July, Northumbrian Water was rated the worst performer for permit compliance in a report by the Environment Agency. The agency warned the company along with South West Water of the “urgent need” to improve.
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