Developing CReDo from Demonstrator to a Market-Ready tool

Authored by Tomas Marsh, Systems Engineer at Connected Places Catapult, this report discusses the future development requirements to ready CReDo for market from its current Phase 2 state (Sept 2023).

CReDo (the Climate Resilience Demonstrator) is a connected digital twin seeking to improve system-wide resilience across infrastructure networks against the effects of climate change. CReDo has incredible potential to make real world impact and scale across multiple use cases including different climate scenarios, different asset types and sectors, and geographical expansion.

In its current Phase 2 state, CReDo utilises integrated data across water networks, telecom networks, power networks, and healthcare networks. Using extreme weather event modelling, direct and cascading failures of the critical infrastructure assets are identified.

This report focuses on the development gaps to be addressed to deliver CReDo from its current demonstrator state to a market-ready tool ready for commercialisation. The development requirements are considered through multiple lenses, including technology developments, potential funding avenues, and business process challenges.

It is comprised of the following sections:

Gap Analysis

Through summarising the current state of CReDo and drawing a direct comparison to the desired future, market-ready state, the development gaps under five key categories have been discussed. This acts a useful tool to summarise the areas for development that will be addressed during upcoming milestones.

Roadmap to Minimum Marketable Product

The roadmap provides a high-level plan of the tasks to be undertaken to address the identified gaps. With each swim lane representing a gap category, the sequencing of tasks and interdependencies are clearly displayed with a summary of future state as the determined end point. A future potential vision for CReDo has not been neglected and is consolidated in the final column of the roadmap.

Potential Funding Opportunities

Whilst CReDo has received the majority of its historic funding through Connected Places Catapult milestones, its alignment with industry innovation objectives has allowed it to access multiple collaborative research and development funds. This section of the report explores existing funds which align with CReDo’s aims and could pose as future potential funding opportunities and enable industry to collaborate closely in the development of CReDo. 

Cross-Sector Funding Mechanisms

Readying CReDo for market is more than just a technology development challenge, a number of process challenges will need to be overcome to enable CReDo to efficiently embed into business-as-usual (BAU) for infrastructure operators. This section of the report considers one key hurdle from this category: mechanisms for funding cross-sector infrastructure resilience upgrades. Three potential concept mechanisms have been developed that could act as the basis for a future model for funding.

This report is intended to be a high-level executive summary of the future of CReDo’s development. It provides a snapshot of the current thinking and alignment between project partners but is not intended to be a strict project plan for upcoming milestones. We welcome your feedback and comments for areas that may have been missed or that may not align with market requirements. Please download the report and provide us feedback in the forum on the CReDo network page.