Interviews with DT Hub Community Co-Chairs Ali Nicholl, IOTICS, Melissa Zanocco, Infrastructure Client Group and Mark Enzer, Director, CDBB and Head of the National Digital Twin programme
As a new phase opens up for the Digital Twin Hub (DT Hub), we have relaunched our Hub Insights 'Live' series.
The introduction of the Digital Twin Hub Community Council brings with it opportunities for DT Hub members to share experiences and get involved in shaping the direction of the Hub. Community Council Co-Chairs @Ali Nicholland @Melissa Zanocco outline their thoughts on a changing attitude to data sharing, the development of key projects such as the Climate Resilience Demonstrator (CReDo) which have grown out of DT Hub relationships, and how the Council will use its voice to help enable socio-technical change.
'Learning by doing, progressing by sharing'
In the third interview of this mini-series, @Mark Enzer, Director of CDBB and Head of the National Digital Twin programme, speaks about his passion for digital twins and connected digital twins, where it began for him, plus a look at the digital twin landscape and how co-ordination and collaboration will be key to taking the work forward.
Mark talks about the exciting opportunities that will result from the transition of the DT Hub to an industry/Catapult partnership hosted at the Connected Places Catapult, the influence of the Centre for Digital Built Britain and the National Digital Twin programme, and the importance of a future strategy for the DT Hub focused on its membership - bringing the industry together to develop the roadmap for an ecosystem of connected digital twins.
Watch the Hub Insights - New horizons videos here:
Sam Chorlton interviews Ali Nicholl
Tom Hughes interviews Melissa Zanocco
Tom Hughes interviews Mark Enzer
NDTp March 2022 editorial – New horizons
Interview with Tom Hughes and Peter El Hajj
As the DT Hub begins its transition to the Connected Places Catapult (CPC), @Tom HughesDT Hub Lead, and @Peter El HajjNDTp Programme Lead, provide an update on all the latest activities and discuss what’s next for the DT Hub. They also reflect on the programme’s achievements over the past three years and their personal highlights.
What can we be looking out for in the next few weeks?
Tom: On the DT Hub side, we are focusing on the completion of our Annual Benchmark report which is a retrospective look at the past 12 months and what we have achieved, as well as setting the stage for what’s next. Simon Evans, Digital Energy Lead at Arup, led a community workshop to ensure that we have input from our members and it’s always invaluable to have that community contribution.
The other big area of focus is the publication of the Digital Twin Roadblocks report. It brings together our findings from a series of workshops on digital twin blockers and provides ideas on how to address them.
We’ve also got a series of Hub Insight interviews, with Ali Nichols – one of the Co-Chairs of the DT Hub Community Council – kicking us off, and finishing with Mark Enzer, Director of CDBB. So, plenty still happening!
Peter: I also want to highlight some key documents coming out as part of the Information Management Framework: Managing Shared Data, Towards Information Management Maturity, Thin-Slice Approach and Information Quality Basics. We’re had a great presentation by Ian Bailey on the Integration Architecture at a recent Gemini call. And one last thing to look out for will be our Theory of Change’ and ‘Benefits Realisation Framework’ reports – both are really important for the programme.
Who will be hosting the DT Hub going forward?
Peter: Some really great news on that front is that the DT Hub will transition from its current home at the CDBB to an Industry/Catapult partnership housed at the Connected Places Catapult (CPC). CPC and the wider Catapult Network have been involved from the early days on the programme and shaped a lot of our thinking and been big supporters throughout.
Tom: It’s fantastic that CPC have taken on the role of host to the DT Hub. It’s so valuable to have the voice of industry which we have had through the process. Alongside Connected Places there is also the wider network of catapults: Energy Systems Catapult, Advanced Manufacturing Catapult, and the Digital Catapult – I probably couldn’t think of a better host and group of stakeholders for the Hub to flourish.
What do you think have been the biggest achievements of the NDTp?
Peter: I think one of them is definitely creating this momentum that is focused on outcomes rather than building a new technology. I think shifting the focus from making it a technical issue to making it a socio-technical programme that requires collaboration - that is a key achievement. I also think it’s been the identification of the requirements at a national level to enable effective information management and an ecosystem of connected digital twins. So, answering the question: ‘what are the components to that?’ We didn’t know this three years ago, but now we have a much more comprehensive idea.
Tom: Yes, then the DT Hub was a line item on the roadmap for the National Digital Twin and the opportunity to work with six founding member organisations. We have seen it develop and grow to become a community that is connecting regularly with thousands of organisations. It’s been really exciting to be a part of. It is knowing the knowledge sharing that takes place and watching people support each other that are the real milestones for the community platform. We’re taking more of an enabling role as people share posts and add to discussions that are important to them. That’s a huge thing.
Peter: I also think it’s that the DT Hub has become the place where national and international initiatives can come to connect, and those outputs shared. And I am aware of other countries setting up digital centres following the DT Hub model – it’s great that we offer a blueprint for others to use.
What has been a personal highlight?
Peter: I received an award on behalf of CDBB at the Royal Society and later found out it was the same award that Tim Berners-Lee had received! Although it wasn’t personal as such – I was collecting it for CDBB, it still felt like a special moment.
Tom: There are a few! One of them was when we did held our open day and I think being able to step back and present all the projects we had worked on really brought home all that we had achieved.
Peter: It was also at that open day that the member numbers of the DT Hub went over 3,000 which felt really significant.
Tom: Another highlight was our Christmas get together in 2019. It was so nice to meet with such a fantastic group of clever, passionate people. And it was the same whenever we got together, whether with the Hub team, or a steering group, or the digital framework task group, every time it was such an enjoyable event.
Peter: Absolutely, working with such a great bunch of people has been a highlight and as we look forward to our next phase we want to thank everyone for all their hard work.
Tom: And likewise, a huge thank you from me.
“As CDBB celebrates the successful completion of its mission to advance the digital transformation of the built environment, I am excited to be able to share the learning we have gained over the past four years both within CDBB and with our many academic, government and industry partners who have made a digital built Britain a reality.
“The Gemini Papers capture the consensus viewpoint of the connected digital twin community and serve as a blueprint for future leaders and policy makers.”
Alexandra Bolton, Executive Director, CDBB
The Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) is delighted to announce the publication of the Gemini Papers.
The Gemini Papers set out CDBB’s vision for the future, showcasing the vital role that connected digital twins play in improving social, economic, and environmental outcomes, to create a better quality of life for all.
Driven by the Gemini Principles of purpose, trust and function, the papers are a series of three documents addressing the ‘What’ ‘Why’ and ‘How’ of connected digital twins.
CDBB has worked closely with industry, academia, and government to explore and create solutions for the challenges facing the built environment.
The Gemini Papers present our learnings from the past five years, capturing the consensus viewpoint of the connected digital twin community - serving as a blueprint for future leaders.
Watch the video: https://youtu.be/PpW5yDzrIn0
Read the Gemini Papers:
Summary paper
What are connected digital twins?
Why connected digital twins?
How to enable an ecosystem of connected digital twins
Motion sensors, CO₂ sensors and the like are considered to be benign forms of monitoring, since they don’t capture images or personal data about us as we move through the buildings we visit. Or at least, that’s what we want to believe. Guest blogger Professor Matthew Chalmers (University of Glasgow) helped develop a mobile game called About Us as part of the CDBB funded Project OAK. The game takes players through a mission using information from building sensors to help them achieve their aims — with a twist at the end. He writes about why we all need to engage with the ethics of data collection in smart built environments.
Mobile games are more than just entertainment. They can also teach powerful lessons by giving the player the ability to make decisions, and then showing them the consequences of those decisions. About Us features a simulated twin of a building in Cambridge, with strategically placed CO₂ sensors in public spaces (such as corridors), and raises ethical questions about the Internet of Things (IoT) in buildings.
The premise of the game is simple. While you complete a series of tasks around the building, you must avoid the characters who you don’t want to interact with (as they will lower your game score), and you should contact your helpers — characters who will boost your score. You can view a map of the building, and plan your avatar’s route to accomplish your tasks, based on which route you think is safest. On the map, you can watch the building’s sensors being triggered. By combining this anonymous sensor data with map details of which offices are located where, you can gather intelligence about the movements of particular characters. In this way, you can find your helpers and avoid annoying interactions. If you’ve avoided the bad characters and interacted with the good characters while completing your tasks, you win the game.
However, a twist comes after you have finished: the game shows you how much could be inferred about your game character, from the exact same sensors that you had been using to make inferences about other characters. Every task in the game exposes some sensitive data about the player’s avatar, and reinforces the player’s uncomfortable realisation that they have exploited apparently neutral data to find and avoid others.
What does this tell us about the ethics of digital twins? Our journeys through the built environment can reveal more than we intend them to, e.g. our movements, our routines, where we congregate, and where we go to avoid others. All this information could inadvertently be revealed by a building digital twin, even though the data used seems (at first glance) to be anonymous and impersonal. The game used CO₂ levels as an example of apparently impersonal data that, when combined with other information (local knowledge in this case), becomes more personal. More generally, data might be low risk when isolated within its originating context, but risk levels are higher given that data can be combined with other systems and other (possibly non-digital) forms of information.
The Gemini Principles set out the need for digital twins to be ethical and secure, but About Us demonstrates that this can be surprisingly difficult to ensure. Collecting data through digital twins provides aggregate insights — that’s why they’re so useful — but it also creates risks that need ongoing governance. It’s vitally important that citizens understand the double-edged problem of digital twins, so that citizens are more able to advocate for how they want the technology to be used, and not used, and for how governance should be implemented.
Gamification is now a well-established technique for understanding and changing user attitudes toward digital technology. About Us was designed to create a safe but challenging environment, in which players can explore an example of data that could be collected in distributed computing environments, the uses to which such data can be put, and the intelligence that can be gathered from resulting inferences. The ultimate purpose of Project OAK is to enable anyone concerned with how data is managed (e.g., data processors, data subjects, governance bodies) to build appropriate levels of trust in the data and in its processing. Only if we recognise the ethical and legal issues represented by digital twins can we start to give meaningful answers to questions about what good system design and good system governance look like in this domain.
Information about this project is available on their GitHub page.
This research forms part of the Centre for Digital Built Britain’s (CDBB) work at the University of Cambridge. It was enabled by the Construction Innovation Hub, of which CDBB is a core partner, and funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF).
To join the conversation with others who are on their own digital twin journeys, join the Digital Twin Hub.
Read more...
A digital twin is a digital representation of something that exists in the physical world (be it a building, a factory, a power plant, or a city) and, in addition, can be dynamically linked to the real thing through the use of sensors that collect real-time data. This dynamic link to the real thing differentiates digital twins from the digital models created by BIM software—enhancing those models with live operational data.
Since a digital twin is a dynamic digital reflection of its physical self, it possesses operational and behavioral awareness. This enables the digital twin to be used in countless ways, such as tracking construction progress, monitoring operations, diagnosing problems, simulating performance, and optimizing processes.
Structured data requirements from the investor are crucial for the development of a digital twin. Currently project teams spend a lot of time putting data into files that unfortunately isn’t useful during the project development or ultimately to the owner; sometimes it is wrong, at other times too little, or in other cases an overload of unnecessary data. At the handover phase, unstructured data can leave owner/operators with siloed data and systems, inaccurate information, and poor insight into the performance of a facility. Data standards such as ISO 19650 directly target this problem that at a simple level require an appreciation of the asset data lifecycle that starts with defining the need in order to allow for correct data preparation.
Implementing a project CDE helps ensure that the prepared data and information is managed and flows easily between various teams and project phases, through to completion and handover. An integrated connected data environment can subsequently leverage this approved project data alongside other asset information sources to deliver the foundation of a valuable useable digital twin.
To develop this connected digital twin, investors and their supply chains can appear to be presented with two choices: an off-the-shelf proprietary solution tied to one vendor or the prospect of building a one-off solution with risk of long term support and maintenance challenges. However, this binary perspective is not the case if industry platforms and readily available existing integrations are leveraged to create a flexible custom digital twin.
Autodesk has provided its customer base with the solutions to develop custom data integrations over many years, commencing with a reliable common data environment solution. Many of these project CDEs have subsequently migrated to become functional and beneficial digital twins because of a structured data foundation. Using industry standards, open APIs and a plethora of partner integrations, Autodesk’s Forge Platform, Construction Cloud and recently Tandem enable customers to build the digital twin they need without fear of near term obsolescence or over commitment to one technology approach. Furthermore partnerships with key technology providers such as ESRI and Archibus extend solution options as well as enhancing long term confidence in any developed digital twin.
The promises of digital twins are certainly alluring. Data-rich digital twins have the potential to transform asset management and operations, providing owners new insights to inform their decision-making and planning. Although digital twin technologies and industry practice are still in their youth, it is clear that the ultimate success of digital twins relies on connected, common, and structured data sources based on current information management standards, coupled with adoption of flexible technology platforms that permit modification, enhancement or component exchange as the digital twin evolves, instead of committing up front to one data standard or solution strategy.
PRESS RELEASE
We are pleased to announce that from 1 April 2022, the DT Hub will transition from its current home at the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) to an Industry/Catapult partnership housed at the Connected Places Catapult (CPC).
The DT Hub motto, ‘Learn by doing and progress by sharing’ and its work ethic also complements the CPC mission, to ‘Connect people, places and businesses to a future of sustainable growth and prosperity’.
CDBB will have completed its mission on the National Digital Twin programme, creating the world-leading platform and community that is the DT Hub, ensuring it is ready for this new chapter of innovation and knowledge exchange.
The transition of the DT Hub to the Industry/Catapult partnership housed at CPC will allow the community to accelerate its growth and address new and exciting project areas across the public and private sectors. It will be an opportunity to reach different people and industry sectors, scale innovation, expand resources and increase knowledge exchange.
The DT Hub was launched by CDBB in March 2020 as part of the National Digital Twin programme. In two years, DT Hub membership numbers have grown from an initial group of six to over 3,500 individuals, representing more than 1,600 organisations from over 77 countries.
A meeting point for people wherever they are on their digital twin journey, the DT Hub is the ‘go-to’ place for those wanting to find out more about connected digital twins. It has shown the need and desire for a digital twin community, and that collaboration, connection, and knowledge exchange are vital if we are to achieve connected digital twins across the built and natural environments. The next phase of the DT Hub will draw on the strength of the wider Catapult Network and its links to a broad range of innovators across industry and academia to build on the foundations laid by CDDB, growing the Hub’s scale and impact.
Commenting on the transition, Alexandra Bolton, Executive Director, CDBB said,
“We are thrilled that the DT Hub will continue its mission at the forefront of innovation. We celebrate its achievements and look ahead to an era that will extend cooperation, coordination and collaboration across sectors and inspire even greater progress towards our vision of enabling people and the planet to flourish together for generations.”
Paul Wilson, Chief Business Officer, CPC said,
“Connected Places Catapult has been working with the Centre for Digital Built Britain since its inception and has been an enthusiastic member of the DT Hub since 2020, taking a leading role in the Climate Resilience Demonstrator (CReDo) collaboration, shown at COP 26. We are delighted to be inheriting the work of the Hub and look forward to growing the work of this vibrant and passionate community.”
Ends
About CDBB
CDBB (Centre for Digital Built Britain) is a partnership between the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the University of Cambridge. It is also a partner in the Construction Innovation Hub. CDBB seeks to understand how the construction and infrastructure sectors could use a digital approach to better design, build, operate, integrate the built environment. A digital built Britain will:
· understand what information is needed to enable better through life economic, social and environmental value from our built environment
· champion human-centric design of infrastructure and the services they deliver
· exploit new and emerging digital construction and manufacturing skills and technology to reduce costs and increase productivity
· grow a new career, business and export opportunities for the UK.
www.cdbb.cam.ac.uk
About the National Digital Twin Programme
The National Digital Twin programme (NDTp), hosted by the University of Cambridge, is playing a key role in the digital transformation of the UK’s infrastructure, and built environment.
Launched by HM Treasury in July 2018, the NDTp has a mandate from Government to facilitate the development of a National Digital Twin – an ecosystem of connected digital twins - to foster better outcomes from our built environment. This is enabled by the Information Management Framework (IMF) and a socio-technical change programme which together provide the necessary building blocks for connected digital twins to share high-quality data securely and effectively.
The NDTp is uniting the collective knowledge of diverse voices of experts to support and empower others to advance change and embrace connected digital twins within their organisations.
www.digitaltwinhub.co.uk/about/national-digital-twin-programme/
About the Digital Twin Hub
The Digital Twin (DT) Hub has been created by The Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) as part of the UK Government-mandated National Digital Twin programme (NDTp).
Driven by the motto of ‘Learn by doing and progress through sharing’, the DT Hub is a space for digital twin owners and suppliers, as well as information management experts, to come together and collaboratively enable this world-leading vision for the NDTp.
The DT Hub connects experts and innovators, providing the opportunity to help shape the future of the built environment in the UK. It is a space to share insight and experience, also to gain further knowledge and seek guidance, on elements such as the Gemini Principles and the Information Management Framework.
www.digitaltwinhub.co.uk
About the Connected Places Catapult
Connected Places Catapult is the UK’s innovation accelerator for cities, transport, and places.
We provide impartial ‘innovation as a service’ for public bodies, businesses, and infrastructure providers to catalyse step-change improvements in the way people live, work and travel. We connect businesses and public sector leaders to cutting-edge research to spark innovation and grow new markets. We run technology demonstrators and SME accelerators to scale new solutions that drive growth, spread prosperity, and eliminate carbon.
www.cp.catapult.org.uk
Connected Places Catapult is part of the wider Catapult Network
www.catapult.org.uk
Introduction
The Strategic Pipeline Alliance (SPA) was established to deliver a major part of Anglian Water’s ‘Water Resources Management Plan’ to safeguard against the potential future impacts of water scarcity, climate change and growth, whilst protecting and enhancing the environment. The SPA was established to deliver up to 500km of large diameter interconnecting transmission pipelines, associated assets and a Digital Twin.
Digital transformation was identified early in the programme as a core foundational requirement for the alliance to run its ‘business’ effectively and efficiently. It will take Anglian Water through a digital transformation in the creation of a smart water system, using a geospatial information system as a core component of the common data environment (CDE), enabling collaboration and visualisation in this Project 13 Enterprise.
Digital Transformation
Our geospatial information system (GIS) described is just one part of a wider digital transformation approach that SPA has been developing and is a step change in the way that Anglian Water uses spatial data to collaborate and make key decisions, with net savings of £1m identified.
When the newly formed SPA went from an office-based organisation to a home-based organisation overnight due to COVID19, standing up an effective central GIS system was critical to maintain the ability to work efficiently, by providing a common window to the complex data environment to all users. With 500km of land parcels and around 5000 stakeholders to liaise with, the GIS system provided the central data repository as well as landowner and stakeholder relationship management. The mobile device applications, land management system, ground investigation solution and ecology mapping processes all enabled SPA to hit its key consenting and EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) application dates.
We got the Alliance in place and fully operative within six months and the SPA GIS has helped fast-track a key SPA goal of increasing automation throughout the project lifecycle; automation tools such as FME (Feature Manipulation Engine), Python and Model Builder have been widely adopted, driving efficiencies.
The SPA GIS analyses and visually displays geographically referenced information. It uses data that is attached to a unique location and enables users to collaborate and visualise near real time information. Digital optimisation will provide enormous value and efficiencies in engineering, production, and operational costs of the smart water system. Having a single repository of up-to-date core project geospatial deliverables and information has reduced risk and enabled domain experts and our supply chain to interact with data efficiently.
Enterprise Architecture
Spending quality time up front in developing an enterprise architecture and data model allowed us to develop a CDE based around GIS. A cost model was approved for the full five years, and the platform was successfully rolled out.
The Enterprise Architecture model was created in a repository linked to Anglian Water’s enterprise. This included mapping out the technology and data integration requirements, as well as the full end-to-end business processes. The result was a consistent, interoperable solution stack that could be used by all alliance partners, avoiding costly duplication. GIS was identified as a key method of integrating data from a wide range of different sources, helping to improve access across the alliance to single version of the truth and improving confidence in data quality. In addition, a fully attributed spatial data model was developed representing the physical assets. This will help support future operations and maintenance use cases that monitor asset performance.
Benefits
The use of our GIS system is enabling SPA to meet its obligations around planning applications and obtaining landowner consent to survey, inspect and construct the strategic pipeline. Hundreds of Gb of data had to be collected, analysed, and managed to create our submissions.
The SPA GIS provides secure, consistent, and rapid access to large volumes of geospatial data in a single repository. Using a common ‘web-centric’ application, the solution enables teams to cooperate on location-based data, ensuring its 700+ users can access current and accurate information. The intuitive interface, combined with unlimited user access, has enabled the Alliance to rapidly scale without restriction. We have also enabled the functionality for desktop software (ESRI ArcPro, QGIS, FME, AutoDesk CAD and Civil3D) to connect to the geodatabase to allow specialist users to work with the data in the managed, controlled environment, including our supply chain partners.
The integration of SPA Land Management and SPA GIS in one platform has brought advantages to stakeholder relationship management by enabling engagement to be reviewed spatially.
SPA’s integrated geospatial digital system has been the go-to resource for the diverse and complex teams. The use of our GIS system has been used to extensively engage with the wider Anglian Water operational teams, enabling greater collaboration and understanding of the complex system. The GIS system has, in part, enabled SPA to remove the need to construct over 100km of pipeline, instead re-using existing assets that have been identified in the GIS solution, contributing to the 63% reduction in forecast capital carbon, compared to the baseline.
The SPA Land Management solution incorporates four core areas: land ownership, land access survey management and stakeholder relationship management (developed by SPA) which puts stakeholder and customer engagement at its heart. With 300 unique land access users, traditionally, these areas would be looked after by separate teams, with separate systems which struggle to share data. With the digital tool, land and engagement data can be shared across SPA, creating a single source of truth, mitigating risk across the whole infrastructure programme. This has benefitted our customers, as engagement with them is managed much more effectively. Our customer sentiment surveys show 98% are satisfied with how we are communicating with them.
The Enterprise Architecture solution allows for capabilities to be transferred into Anglian Water’s enterprise, and there has been careful consideration around ensuring the value of data collected during the project is retained. SPA is developing blueprints as part of the outputs to enable future Alliances to align with best practices, data, cyber and technology policies. SPA is also focussing on developing the cultural and behavioural aspects with Anglian Water to enable Anglian to be able to accept the technological changes as part of this digital transformation. This is a substantial benefit and enables Anglian Water to continue to work towards its operator of the future ambitions, where digital technologies and human interfaces will delivery higher levels of operational excellence.
Read more...
'The growth of the Digital Twin Hub (DT Hub) over the last two years has exceeded all our expectations as numbers have leapt from an initial group of six, to an amazing 3,400 members, representing more than 1,600 organisations from over 77 countries across the globe.
'The DT Hub has become a vibrant meeting place for people wherever they are on their digital twin journey and the ‘go-to’ place for anyone wanting to find out more about connected digital twins. It has been a game-changer, showing the real need and desire for this DT community, and that collaboration, connection, and knowledge exchange are vital if we are to achieve our goal of connected digital twins across the built and natural environments. As the DT Hub approaches its second-year anniversary, we would like to share our progress and learnings.'
Alexandra Bolton, Executive Director, CDBB
Read the Annual Benchmark Report 2021
'The growth of the Digital Twin Hub (DT Hub) over the last two years has exceeded all our expectations as numbers have leapt from an initial group of six, to an amazing 3,400 members, representing more than 1,600 organisations from over 77 countries across the globe.
'The DT Hub has become a vibrant meeting place for people wherever they are on their digital twin journey and the ‘go-to’ place for anyone wanting to find out more about connected digital twins. It has been a game-changer, showing the real need and desire for this DT community, and that collaboration, connection, and knowledge exchange are vital if we are to achieve our goal of connected digital twins across the built and natural environments. As the DT Hub approaches its second-year anniversary, we would like to share our progress and learnings.'
Alexandra Bolton, Executive Director, CDBB
Read the Annual Benchmark Report 2021
Collaboration and resilience through connected digital twins: CReDo show-and-tell webinar
The CReDo team launched its Climate Resilience Demonstrator project at the start of November 2021, during COP26. This Collaboration and resilience through connected digital twins webinar, held on 2 March 2022, wraps up the accomplishments and lessons learned from the project. If you missed the event or would like to catch up with all or part of it again, please watch it here.
Webinar summary
With a warm welcome from the National Digital Twin programme's Kirsten Lamb, the event began with CReDo project lead Sarah Hayes giving a Project Overview, explaining how CReDo came together and introducing the people behind the achievement.
CReDo's technical architect, Tom Collingwood from the Hartree Centre, talked about the different stages of technical development in his presentation Project Findings and Methodology, followed by Jethro Ackroyd, CMCL Innovations, who gave a Project Model demonstration to show how CReDo was realised using synthetic data.
CDBB's Matthew West and Anglian Water's Tom Burgoyne completed the technical presentations with a walk-through the practical considerations of bringing together the Information Management Framework (IMF) and CReDo and an overview of IMF Practice at Anglian Water.
The next section of the webinar featured an Asset Owner and Project Sponsor interview, with insights from Richard Buckingham, Anglian Water; Matt Webb, UK Power Networks; Louise Krug, BT; and Yalena Coleman from the Connected Places Catapult.
CReDo project manager Rachel Judson discussed the important Lessons Learned from the CReDo demonstrator then invited Holger Kessler of the Geospatial Commission to speak about commonalities with the National Underground Asset Register work.
The task of assessing CReDo Benefits is being managed by Frontier Economics and Frontier's Matthew Bell covered some of the many benefits and how these are being collated.
Rounding off, Sarah Hayes presented CReDo Recommendations and encouraged development of new CReDo-style connected digital twins. The event concluded with a popular Q&A session with speakers and the panel, plus further invited guests (see below for some of the questions).
Reports
CReDo resulted in a suite of reports covering the technical development of the demonstrator. You can read these by visiting the CReDo technical report pages below:
Technical report 1: Building a Cross-Sector Digital Twin Technical report 2: Generating Flood Data Technical report 3: Assessing Asset Failure Technical report 4: Modelling System Impact
Q&A questions from the webinar
We are pleased to share below the answers to a number of the questions that we couldn't respond to on the day.
Question
Your answer
What is the approach to cyber security to protect critical national infrastructure? What are the benefits to the participants providing the data?
[Matt Webb] Benefits to participants providing the data relate to long term planning, medium term event readiness and near real-time operational activities.
The insight provided by the connected digital twin facilitates improved insight into asset criticality, risk, and the consequences of failure. This aids in informing and justifying investment planning and intervention.
Medium term event readiness can be considered in the context of the build-up to impactful events, allowing targeted, proactive mitigation and resource deployment to reduce impact and accelerate repair and restoration activities.
Near real-time application facilitates in-event insight into present impact and cascade impact across critical infrastructure, enabling enhanced coordination between asset organisations.
In all respects, network resilience is enhanced, investments optimised and asset damage and associated costs reduced.
[Ben Mawdsley] In a CReDo only context:
All asset owner data was transferred under encryption and passed to STFC through either a physical medium or internet transfer for storage on DAFNI. The decryption key was provided separately, and data only stored on a single, mutually agreed data store located behind the STFC firewall and requiring multi factor authentication to access. Users were kept to the minimum number of staff necessary.
If working independently, no single asset owner would have access to all of the data present in the twin. Working together, we can identify the connections across these different datasets and learn the dependencies, allowing us to build models with greater functionality than three independent models would produce. If we can accurately model future impacts, we can make more informed decisions now to mitigate these.
There’s also the case that sharing data now makes sharing data in the future easier- if we can make the changes now, we can make future applications easier to develop.
Can you share more details of the thin slice approach please?
Which data standards have been used to ensure data interoperability? Breaking down the data silos?
[Matthew West] There are two papers that are in draft awaiting publication by CPNI that will say more about the thin slice approach. They are;
Managing Shared Data that talks about the approach in a wider context, and
Developing Thin Slices that talks more about the bottom up methodology Tom Burgoyne described.
Contact me if you want to see pre-publication drafts of these papers. matthew.west@informationjunction.co.uk
The current available data standards are what we call Industry Data Models, like the Industry Foundation Classes, and Reference Data Libraries, like UniClass2015. The IMF Team has done a survey of the ones available that have been brought to our attention:
https://digitaltwinhub.co.uk/files/file/89-a-survey-of-industry-data-models-and-reference-data-libraries/
The problem here is that none of these IDMs are compatible with each other. So, the problem for the IMF Team is to develop a data model (the Foundation Data Model) that is able to integrate data from them. In this process we will be treating industry data models as thin slices.
So far have you any indication from the Asset Owners as to how the information will be applied and any extra visualisation required
[Matt Webb] My above response largely covers this. With respect to visualise, a range of data visualisations could potentially applied – geospatial, schematic, charts, etc. – to cater for these various use cases.
[Louise Krug] The ideas are that we can use the model to help direct investment – what sites are most at risk from different climate events, where risks are elevated due to interconnectedness
We would also like to use the Twin to support operational teams during extreme events – help the teams from different organisations cooperate
Other types of output are likely to be needed – lists of top 10 sites at risk for example rather than just visualisations
Visualisations may be a good way to interact with the system to say “take this out” , “move this element” or “replace these values” and have that run through the model to see its impact.
[Matt Edwards] Now that we have a working demo we can socialise internally we will use it as a means to develop more detailed user stories. We see potential opportunities for use already through all stages of the asset lifecycle; planning investment, design and engineering / construction, operations and maintenance, customer and service management, incident and safety management, and decommissioning.
We are completely open to the need for further visualisations; as soon as data is presented in context (information), people and users always want more! Digital products should always be developed with opportunities for continuous improvement in mind.
[Jethro Akroyd] Other types of output are likely to be needed – lists of top 10 sites at risk for example rather than just visualisations.
Visualisations may be a good way to interact with the system to say “take this out”, “move this element” or “replace these values” and have that run through the model to see its impact
Are you testing the model in collaboration with research institutions in other countries?
[Chris Dent] On the application side, we are focused on the UK context. The methodology required for this kind of study is however universal, and we are developing links with analogous projects in Europe and the USA with a view to collaboration on future phases of underpinning research.
[Jethro Akroyd] Yes. Many of the ideas underlying the use of the knowledge graph in the CReDo are inspired by the World Avatar project, which is a collaboration between CMCL Innovations (who implemented the CReDo digital twin), the University of Cambridge and Cambridge CARES, the university's research centre in Singapore.
{Ben Mawdsley] All project out puts will be available as Open source or permissive licences that are accessible so anybody, here in the UK or overseas, could contribute to building models.
- How can technology and data providers get involved and support the mission ? Would be interested to learn more about engagement channels, procurement and Collaboration opportunities
[Yalena Coleman] Please contact yalena.coleman@cp.catapult.org.uk for any enquiries about how to get involved in Phase 2, we will be happy to set up calls to explore various routes for collaboration / procurement.
[Chris Dent] In addition, the research organisation partners would be very pleased to discuss with interested parties how their needs can drive future research agendas, and how they might collaborate with and provide use cases for follow-on research.
[Matt Edwards] At Anglian Water we have our Water Innovation Network (WIN) - WIN is a free partnership initiative run by not for profit organisation Allia and Anglian Water. It is the platform Anglian Water uses to connect and engage with potential supply chain, which includes innovators, individuals and businesses. Water Innovation Network (anglianwater.co.uk).
can you envisage having several levels of openness regarding simulations?- e.g at least one version where some data could be viewed by the public - where security and privacy re assets was not compromised
[Matt Webb] Yes – I think that is both appropriate and necessary.
Given the nature of the data, the extent of integration and the insight provided, limitations of access need to be considered for all use cases and end-users. The degree of ‘openness’ will vary in line with this.
[Louise Krug] That is the purpose of the simulated data system – simulated data used for all aspects that can’t be openly shared
{Matt Edwards] Yes. Anglian Water increasingly develop solutions in this fashion; Digdat (digdat) and In your Area (In Your Area (digdat.co.uk)) being a couple where the public have access to visualisations and data that in reality are far more complex and enriched when used internally. The aim though is to present only views to the public that their user stories require. The products are always being evaluated for improvement. We are aware we need to constantly challenge what is open to the public, and we use data sensitivity classifications as one of the ways in which we understand access requirements as well as challenge ourselves.
Are there any intentions to expand this example to include transportation networks?
[Yalena Coleman] Absolutely – transport network information is already being tabled for discussion as an additional data source in Phase 2 – including road networks both national and local.
Good to see progress over the past few months. Are the Data Sharing Agreements available to share? Also there was mention at the launch event of SLAs with Regulators being revisited. Any progress on that front?
This is a huge search space to look for improvements to the various networks. What thoughts do you have about how to support the actors to search this?
[Chris Dent] This is one of the directions in which we wish to expand the Operational Research activity within CReDo. The visibility across the three networks will alone provide new insights into where critical areas for reinforcement lie. We can also potentially use mathematical optimization tools to search potential options – in practice this would work by helping develop a list of candidate projects for evaluation by the asset owners.
[Jethro Akroyd] Increase the level of detail in the digital twin so that it can describe things like switching between alternative supply routes, and link it to models that suggest possible mitigating actions. Automate the running of the digital twin to systematically investigate different options.)
I’m aware that the role of bridges in carrying pipes and cables has become apparent during several flood events, and the bridge collapses have led to power cuts, severance of gas mains etc. Have you considered including bridges which carry pipes/cables in future versions of the model?
[Matt Webb] This is an interesting point. Bridges are just one form of civil asset that could be considered in this context, many of which are shared by multiple asset owners. Having visibility of these ‘pinch-points’ would be of significant value from a risk mitigation point of view.
A good real-world example of this is the Kingsway incident in central London several years ago. In that instance, the interaction of telecoms, electricity, gas and water assets in a common subterranean tunnel system resulted in an extensive and sustained tunnel fire severely damaging all of those networks.
[Jethro Akroyd] One of the next steps in the project is to assess what additional information might be needed in the digital twin. This is a very interesting suggestion. NB This naturally links to the question above [and below] about including transport
It is great to see in the first presentation that the National Digital Twin is seen as a socio-technical change. While there is great technical development evident from the presentations, the social aspect of sociotechnical system is not as evident. Any work planned to analyse the socio-technical aspects of having this connected digital twin thinking ? for example, the social actors, and the dynamic relationship between technical and social aspects of a connected digital twin ? Thank you.
[Jethro Akroyd] I recently published a paper where we applied the same underlying design of digital twin to enable interoperability between socio-technical data (energy usage, climate and fuel poverty data) to investigate how the adoption of heat pumps might affect inequality: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adapen.2021.100079. The connection with CReDo is that this work uses exactly the same design [i.e. ontologies and a knowledge graph] that CMCL used for CReDo
What Open Source data did you use?
[Jethro Akroyd] By first intent, the CReDo digital twin was implemented using open source software with permissive licences. Full details are given in the technical reports. The digital twin was developed using confidential data about real assets. The demonstration at the webinar used synthetic data that the project team created and that will be published under a permissive open licence. The demonstration at the webinar also showed the ability to incorporate open data from the Environment Agency and Ordnance Survey. Details will be published in a forthcoming report.
[Ben Mawdsley] Flood models HiPIMS are open source software too. Uses UKCP18 data.
This research aimed to investigate the breadth and depth of digital twin blockers, galvanising the community towards greater engagement and collaboration to solve a complex set of national challenges.
The DT Hub’s strategic approach was cyclical, beginning with highlighting the challenges and the opportunities faced by members.
The project consisted of a series of strategy jams with the community interspersed by activity on the DT Hub in a ‘call-and-response’ manner. This approach became more effective as the project progressed.
First, community thinking was used to seed the Roadblock Identification Jam, whose outputs in turn were put back into the community for further comment, refinement and validation.
The next step was to kick off a discussion on the relative importance of different roadblocks to feed into the Roadblock Prioritisation Jam. Again, the outputs were subsequently checked in the wider community.
The final DT Hub activity was preparatory to the Roadblock Prototyping Jam, consisting of a brainstorm to find ways around certain blockers, the results of which were fed into the final Jam – evaluating the problem definition and trying to find solutions.
The research resulted in recommendations to support the DT Hub in tackling gaps, prioritising pressing issues and galvanising engagement to tackle the blockers. In summary, they are to:
· Form a digital twin accelerator programme
· Review the online community platform
· Leverage the convening power of the DT Hub for engagement with others
· Lead on the development of vision and value for digital twins
· Evaluate and progress the Strategy Jam ideas
· Introduce a problem-solving toolkit
· Conduct a meta-analysis to compare this research with other findings and DT Hub resources.
Read the report.
Electricity, water and telecoms assets are owned and operated separately, but they form an interconnected system. This means that the failure of one asset, for example in the event of a flood, can cause assets of other operators to fail. For example, electricity substations provide power to water and wastewater pumping stations and telephone exchanges; cooling water systems can be used to remove waste heat from telephone exchanges; and telephone lines are installed at electricity substations where a mobile telephone signal cannot be received.
Flooding can cause failures to utility assets, which can propagate through the system. This results in costs to asset operators as well as service interruptions and associated costs for customers. For example, the Environment Agency estimated that the total economic damage of the winter floods of 2015 and 2016 to asset operators (electricity and water) and their customers was more than £100m.1 Because of climate change, the likelihood of these potentially damaging floods is expected to increase over the next century.
CReDo can help address a key information barrier preventing investment in system resilience
Asset operators invest in their assets to ensure that they are resilient to climate change, including floods. Asset operators understand their own networks and, when deciding whether and how to invest in resilience, they take account of a number of factors. These include how critical each asset is for their networks and the financial resources they have available for resilience investment.
It is unlikely that asset operators have complete information on 1) the resilience of other operators’ assets on which their assets depend or 2) how critical their assets are for other operators. For these reasons, investment decisions may not be as cost effective across the system as they could be. For example, an asset operator may decide not to invest in a specific asset because it is not critical for its network, not knowing that it may be critical for another asset operator’s network. It may also decide to increase the resilience of one of the assets which is critical for its network, not knowing that the other asset operators’ assets on which its assets depend are already resilient. Hence, there is an information barrier that prevents asset operators from assessing the resilience of the whole system and making investment decisions accordingly.
The combination of a system-wide view of infrastructure resilience provided by CReDo and improved information management is expected to lower the information barrier. Frontier Economics was commissioned by CDBB to identify the expected impacts of CReDo and provide a simulation of the subset of potential social benefits related to flood resilience.
Visit our Recommendations and Resources page to read the report
This report sets out an overview of the first phase of CReDo, running from April 2021 to March 2022, with a focus on the technical architecture developed to integrate different datasets and models into the connected digital twin.
CReDo is a climate adaptation digital twin sponsored by UK Research and Innovation and Connected Places Catapult and is the pilot project for the National Digital Twin programme. CReDo’s purpose is two-fold:
1. To demonstrate the benefits of using connected digital twins to increase resilience and enable climate change adaptation and mitigation
2. To demonstrate how principled information management enables digital twins and datasets to be connected in a scalable way as part of the development of the information management framework
Data about assets is brought together across three infrastructure asset owners — Anglian Water, BT and UK Power Networks — into a connected digital twin of the infrastructure system network. Combining data sets from three separate organisations into one system model is not straightforward. Principled information management techniques, such as using the appropriate ontologies and striving for semantic precision, are essential to bringing the data together to present the clearest picture of the infrastructure system without inaccuracies.
Coastal and fluvial flood data has been sourced from the Environment Agency and the HiPIMS (High-Performance Integrated hydrodynamic Modelling System)[1] model has been used to generate surface water flooding data that could be expected under a range of future climate change scenarios. Expert elicitation techniques have been employed to understand the impact of the flood scenarios on asset failure within the infrastructure networks. Operational research techniques have been employed to better understand the infrastructure interdependencies and to identify the propagation of asset failure, both across single networks and across the infrastructure system as a whole, resulting from the flood scenarios. This builds a picture of system impact from flooding scenarios that would not otherwise be available to the individual networks or regulators who would only see the impact of flooding on single networks.
Visit our Recommendations and Resources page to read the report
CReDo aims to demonstrate how the National Digital Twin programme could use connected digital twins to increase climate resilience. This first phase of the project investigates how to implement a digital twin to share data across sectors to investigate the impact of extreme weather, in particular flooding, on energy, water and telecoms networks. The current digital twin integrates flood simulations for different climate change scenarios with descriptions of the energy, water and telecoms networks, and models the interdependence of the infrastructure to describe the resilience of the combined network.
CMCL Innovations were engaged by the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB )and the Connected Places Catapult (CPC) as part of CReDo to develop a digital twin of assets from Anglian Water, BT and UK Power Networks. The digital twin combines a description of the logical connectivity between the assets with flood data to resolve the effect of floods on individual assets and the corresponding cascade of effects across the combined network. It demonstrates how to achieve basic interoperability between data from different sectors, and how this data might be combined with flood data for different climate scenarios to begin to explore the resilience of the combined network and identify vulnerabilities to support strategic decision making and capital planning.
The first phase of the digital twin and an accompanying visualisation were implemented on DAFNI, the Data & Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure. This report describes the use and technical implementation of the current digital twin. Recommendations are made for how it could be extended to improve its ability to support decision making, and how the approach could be scaled up by the National Digital Twin programme.
Visit the technical report page
Climate change will bring far reaching consequences across many aspects of society, including our health, prosperity and future security. The latest climate projections from the UK Met Office indicate that we will experience warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers, together with an increase in the frequency and intensity of extremes. Substantial increases in hourly precipitation extremes are expected, with the frequency of days with hourly rainfall > 30 mm/h almost doubling by the 2070s. The increase in short, intense, rainfall events may be expected to manifest in flooding which can cause serious threats to society and the economy.
This report provides details of how flood data was generated within the CReDO project. A summary of different types of flooding are considered (river, coastal, surface water) together with an outline of standard industry approaches and requirements to quantifying probabilities of occurrence. We provide a summary of the information available within the UKCP18 projections, and how this can be used for assessing changes in precipitation under climate change scenarios. This includes the UKCP18 local projections, consisting of hourly data at a 2.2km resolution for 12 simulations from a convection-permitting model, with a bias correction applied, and the probabilistic extremes dataset (PPCE), with discussion of what information these products can and cannot provide.
Information on the risk of river and tidal flooding in the study region is provided from Environment Agency models. UKCP18 does not provide direct information on flooding, and the flood model HiPIMS was used to convert precipitation to surface water flooding. For generating storm events, FEH methodology was used, in combination with uplifts from different sources to represent the effects of climate change, and a discussion of how UKCP18 products may augment this approach, given appropriate consideration of the challenges in using this for decision making.
Using HiPIMS allowed the provision of multiple surface water flooding scenarios for different storm lengths, return periods (1 in 100, 1 in 1000 year events) and climate change scenarios, giving spatio-temporal maps of flood depth over time, in a form that can be used to assess the vulnerability of assets and consider how changes in the climate will affect the likelihood, and extent, of flooding in the future.
Visit the technical report page
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