Demos:
Climate Resilience
Climate change is a worldwide, systemic challenge, and it demands a systems-based approach. A number of projects utilising The World Avatar have been used to show the benefits of this connected methodology and how better information and coordination enables providers to identify better solutions. Collaboration through connected digital twins is key to effectively tackling global climate change.
Each of the demonstrations below was created using elements of The World Avatar to drive innovation in the field of digital twins, and show how a connected, network-of-networks approach can be used to tackle the climate issue.
Select any of the entries below to open the live demonstration in a new browser tab.
CReDo (Ofwat Catalyst)
In 2022, temperatures in the UK surpassed 40°C for the first time in recorded history. The overall additional cost to Anglian Water customers from the impact of this extreme heat event was valued at £2.9m, which includes additional energy costs associated with keeping assets cool enough to operate. Extreme heat is happening now, and it is even more likely to occur in the future. The water sector is only just beginning to understand the effect of these extreme heat events on asset failure.
In this phase, Anglian Water worked alongside the CReDo team to address this problem and improve the water sector’s understanding of the impact of extreme heat on assets.
CReDo (Phase 2)
Collaborating on the first phase of CReDo were Anglian Water, BT and UK Power Networks, who used their asset and operations data as well as weather data supplied by the Met Office on a secure, shared basis to inform an increased level of infrastructure resilience. These data sets were securely shared to create a digital twin of the infrastructure system for energy, water and telecoms. This enabled insights from the data that can inform decision making concerning capital and operational planning and real time operations reducing the cost and disruptive impact of extreme weather events. CReDo was delivered through a collaboration of research centres (Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Newcastle, and Warwick along with the Science and Technology Facilities Council, and the Joint Centre of Excellence in Environmental Intelligence) and industry, funded by BEIS, the Connected Places Catapult, and the University of Cambridge.
CReDo (Phase 1)
The Climate Resilience Demonstrator, CReDo, is a climate change adaptation digital twin demonstrator project developed by the National Digital Twin programme to improve resilience across infrastructure networks. CReDo is a pioneering project to develop, for the first time in the UK, a digital twin across infrastructure networks to provide a practical example of how connected-data and greater access to the right information can improve climate adaptation and resilience. CReDo is the pilot project for the National Digital Twin programme demonstrating how it is possible to connect up datasets across organisations and deliver both private and public good.
Enabled by funding from UKRI, The University of Cambridge, and Connected Places Catapult, CReDo looks specifically at the impact of extreme weather, in particular flooding, on energy, water and telecoms networks. CReDo brings together asset datasets, flood datasets, asset failure models and a system impact model to provide insights into infrastructure interdependencies and how they would be impacted under future climate change flooding scenarios. The vision for the CReDo digital twin is to enable asset owners, regulators and policymakers to collaborate using the CReDo digital twin to make decisions which maximise resilience across the infrastructure system rather than from a single sector point of view. Technical implementation and visualisation of the digital twin was carried out by CMCL. For more information about CReDo, visit the Digital Twin Hub.
Flood Risk
This example of a UK based digital twin can be queried to address cross-domain geospatial questions. In the linked visualisation, the digital twin is used to identify assets that are at risk from flooding in the vicinity of King’s Lynn. The flood region is based on the Flood Map for Planning (Rivers and Sea) – Flood Zone 3, which is the best estimate of land that in the absence of flood defences has more than a 1 in 100 (1%) of flooding each year from rivers (a fluvial flood) or more than a 1 in 200 (0.5%) or greater chance of flooding each year from the sea (a tidal flood).