28
www.utilityweek.co.uk/fLeX
D I G I T A L T W I N S
to improve the way infrastructure works
in a local area, in a city, or nationally. It's
a long-term vision, but the building blocks
are being put in place."
A digital twin is defined as a digital
representation of a physical asset or system,
which provides information about its current
design, state, condition and its history.
A twin can be used to improve decision
making around what future infrastructure
to build, or how to manage current and
future infrastructure. A prerequisite is the
inclusion of some element of 'live' data
and a connection between the physical
entity and the twin.
e 2018 Gartner Hype Cycle, which
assesses the maturity and adoption of
emerging technologies, lists digital twins
as among the technologies likely to achieve
mainstream business adoption in the next
five to ten years. Major software vendors,
such as Microsoft and Bentley, recently
launched tools that enable infrastructure
owners to capture, simulate and interrogate
their assets as digital twins. Bentley's
iTwin Services cloud platform enables the
creation of both civil infrastructure projects
and operational infrastructure assets.
e technology has the potential to
provide utility companies with greater
visibility of network performance, and
quickly crunch the numbers when planning
complex scenarios such as an outage or
the impact of adding in new infrastructure.
D e c e n t r a l i s e d
e n e r g y g e n e r a t i o n
Engineering consultancy Accenture has
developed digital twins for electricity
transmission companies to help plan for
complications related to decentralised
Heavy rain in
the sewers of
Auckland causes
frequent overflows
that flush raw
effluent into
local rivers and
harbours, posing a
serious health risk
for the thousands
of swimmers
who frequent
local beaches
