Utility Week

30 www.utilityweek.co.uk/fLeX D I G I T A L T W I N S to share data in different formats, but historic siloed thinking in the infrastructure sector threatens to limit the available insights. N I C s e t s t h e a g e n d a e NIC recognised the critical importance of data sharing to improve infrastructure performance in its groundbreaking report "Data for the Public Good", published in 2017. e government's response was to ask the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) to lead the development of the Information Management Framework that will lay the foundation for the development of digital twins and ultimately the creation of a National Digital Twin (an interconnected ecosystem of twins for infrastructure including utilities, roads, rail, schools and hospitals, etc.) e CDBB has published Gemini principles, which set out a high-level picture of what digital twins should look like, and a basic roadmap for the Information Management Framework. BIM is expected to lay much of the groundwork for the Framework, explains the NIC's Hayes: "BIM is all about having data for building infrastructure in a common format and the Framework will build upon that and apply it to existing infrastructure so we can label what we have already got so we can use it integrally and interoperatively with new infrastructure." A digital twin hub (DT Hub), a collaborative learning community for those who own or develop twins – including government, asset owners, standards organisations and academia – was launched in April in an effort to translate many of these ideas into reality. DAFNI's Chorlton was appointed as chair of the Steering Group for the DT Hub. He told Flex: "We are going to look at questions like: how do we standardise our approach? What does the development of digital twins look like? What does a simple digital twin look like, versus a complex digital twin? How can we provide a common ontology and a common taxonomy so that when, for example, an energy digital twin is trying to talk to a water digital twin, there is a common language they can use to interact? We want to steer everyone in a similar direction so we are contributing to the same outcomes." According to Chorlton, technology is the easiest piece in the digital twin puzzle, it is industry culture and a reluctance to open up its data that will be hardest to overcome. "We've got to provide reassurance that this can be done in a responsible manner and that it is not going to make your company vulnerable to commercial losses or make us vulnerable from a national security perspective. We're confident in our approach and how to leverage the technology, it's now a matter of bringing industry along for the journey," he concludes. SENSORS, RESILIENCE AND STRATEGIC DECISIONS Northumbrian Water is working with researchers at Newcastle University to develop three digital twins designed to improve its operational and strategic decision making. e water utility invested around £120,000 in the project, which will see four PhD researchers from the University develop models using data from an open source network of sensors installed across the city, plus other sources. e first twin will aim to capture the biogas upgrading process, whereby sewage sludge is processed to create biogas. Biogas can have propane added to increase its calorific value for supply to the gas network, which adds costs, or it can be fed into in-house combined heat and power engines to make electricity. Chris Jones, research and development manager at Northumbrian Water, explains: " e idea is we capture those processes as a series of mathematical models, then bring in sensor readings from the processes themselves, plus live information on things like the market value of gas, and the digital twin will use analytics to advise on the best use to make of the gas. e results will be fed as some kind of decision support to the operational team." e second twin will aim to predict the various impacts of an operational incident on the network, such as a burst water main, which can traditionally prevent engineers from intervening on the network because access is blocked, either by water or by traffic disruption. e first prototype combined a surface model of the city with hydraulic modelling software to show where water from a burst pipe, at any location and with a given flow rate, would move over 90 minutes. at is now being expanded to create a browser-based tool to allow any authorised user to quickly understand where the water will flow and manage the response, including sharing the results with the emergency services and city authorities to help them understand the scale of the likely disruption. e final twin is more strategic and long term and will aim to understand future demand on wastewater and water services. It will capture in detail how customers currently use their services and then identify trends such as the efficiency of white goods, or the effect of people paving over their gardens, which changes the water use and the drainage characteristics of a catchment. "Capturing those individual choices at property level, then aggregating the data to understand what might be happening at a catchment level, can help us understand whether the current service position will be sufficient," says Jones. "It's about understanding what technology and changes to behaviour might mean for us in the future so we can adapt our services to ensure they remain resilient and relevant." Surface water modelling in the digital twin developed by Northumbrian Water and Newcastle University (Picture: Newcastle University)

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