CReDo moves to Connected Places Catapult and wraps up its first phase

PRESS RELEASE

With the announcement that the Digital Twin Hub will transition to an Industry/Catapult partnership housed at the Connected Places Catapult (CPC), we are pleased to add that the next phase of the National Digital Twin programme’s Climate Resilience Demonstrator (CReDo) will also move to CPC. This next phase will build on the excellent efforts of the interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral team who worked on CReDo so far. This work is being shared openly to contribute to a culture of secure data sharing for the purposes of resilience and adaptation to climate change. 

The first phase of CReDo, showing the benefits of connected digital twins across infrastructure networks on adaptation and resilience, is coming to a close at the end of March. This phase of the project, funded by UK Research and Innovation, the University of Cambridge and CPC, wrapped up with a public webinar on 2nd March 2022, which was attended by over 240 participants and featured insights from the technical development team, funders and asset owners.

So far, CReDo has demonstrated how collaboration through connected digital twins is key to tackling climate change. The project is marking the move into its next phase at CPC with a series of outputs that will share key findings, benefits, lessons learned and the technical approach to this first-of-its-kind collaboration. These are all openly available on the Digital Twin Hub from today. 

Discussing the urgency for collaboration through connected digital twins, Sarah Hayes, Head of the CReDo project, said: “The risks arising from failing to adapt to climate change are huge. CReDo seeks to mitigate these risks by increasing our understanding of infrastructure interdependencies and the future impact of interventions to increase resilience. The CReDo team have worked incredibly hard to lay the foundations for increasing infrastructure system resilience. It is the skills of our people, supported by new technologies, which will take forward our capability to tackle climate change through connected digital twins.”

Pointing to the potential for this work to have a positive impact, Mark Enzer, Head of the National Digital Twin programme, said: “In a wonderfully tangible and relevant way, CReDo has shown the value of enabling secure information flow across sector boundaries. But this should be just the beginning. The idea of connecting digital twins must be extended to other sectors and other use cases – not only in addressing climate change, but wherever we need to understand systems better and intervene more effectively. I believe in CReDo!” 

Looking forward to the next phase of the project, Yalena Coleman, Director of Applied Data & Technology at CPC, said, “Integrated infrastructure is a key strategic focus area for Connected Places Catapult, and we will be investing in further phases of CReDo, working together with partners to take forward the key learnings from this phase. We will ensure the learnings are shared with the wider community and across other relevant initiatives like the Digital Connectivity Infrastructure Accelerator, National Underground Asset Register and others; and link up industry, academia and government thinking in this area.”