Climate resilience digital twin tops Green Building, Infrastructure and Adaptation category
Work to develop CReDo – the Climate Resilience Demonstrator – has led Connected Places Catapult to scoop a sustainability award. It won the ‘Green Building, Infrastructure and Adaptation’ category at the Climate Innovation Awards in early December, organised by research and advisory firm Verdantix.
CReDo aims to improve the resilience of critical infrastructure assets such as energy, water and telecoms from climate threats including flooding and extreme heat, by sharing data in a digital twin. A prototype has been created in East Anglia which illustrates sites that could be affected by high water levels, and identifies assets that may fail or suffer along with cascading effects.
“It’s great to have an award-winning project within our stable that helps with climate adaptation, just as the COP28 climate conference is under way,” said Connected Places Catapult’s Ecosystem Director for Integrated Infrastructure, Chris Jones. “We’re at a point where we have proven the principles of CReDo, and can begin to scale up and solve more problems. This award feels like an endorsement to the approach we’ve taken, and sets us up for the next stage of work.”
Chris added: “We have shown we have the foundations for connecting data across organisations, to improve the climate resilience of assets in the face of a changing climate.”.
CReDo project partner CMCL’s Business Development Manager, Toby Greenwood said: “This recognition of CReDo as a collaborative and connected digital twin for climate resilience is splendid news for the entire team.
“CReDo has enabled us to express ourselves via some innovative technical milestones such as the distributed data architecture, information derivation framework and the semantic knowledge graph for enabling cross-sector interoperability. We are proud to have contributed to CReDo, and are excited with the prospects of transforming the connected digital twin to include new asset owners and sectors as well as additional climate events such as extreme heat.”
CReDo brings together asset owners Anglian Water, BT and UK Power Networks to share their data for an area of East Anglia, in order to develop a digital twin. The award nomination was made by flood resilience specialist Fathom which supplied flood data to the platform.
CReDo Engagement Lead, Sarah Hayes said: “It’s fantastic to see CReDo recognised for its potential contribution to the adaptation of infrastructure. At Connected Places Catapult we are looking for investment and partnering opportunities to scale up CReDo both in and outside of the UK, so please get in touch.””
Fathom’s Account Manager, Peter Slater said: “It’s great to see CReDo recognised by Verdantix’s judging panel for its mission to future-proof the UK’s infrastructure against climate change through an interconnected approach to adaptation and mitigation. We’re proud to be part of the Digital Twin Hub community and are excited to continue collaborating with the other parties as the project evolves through Phase 2 and beyond.”
Future aims of CReDo
Going into next year, the CReDo project will look to work with more network operators and asset owners to integrate and connect their data, across further areas of the UK, and to explore more how working together can help improve decision making around climate adaption and resilience of infrastructure, in the face of not just flooding but extreme heat too.
Expansions to CReDo are being funded by both Ofwat and Ofgem Innovation funds, covering both the water and energy sectors and is looking to develop use cases for the transport sector in rail and roads.
CReDo Technical Lead, Elliot Christou (pictured receiving the award below) says the infrastructure sector is becoming more aware of the potential for digital twins – but there is still some way to go. “Everyone is on a journey to properly realise the value of digital twins; beyond just a visualisation tool for data, to becoming more about creating actionable and operational decisions.
“Through our work, we’re trying to lower the barriers for data sharing, and show how valuable it can be to have a connected understanding of infrastructure to help with climate resilience and adaptation,” added Elliot, who is also Connected Places Catapult’s Data and Technology Team Lead.
Chris Jones says the technology is there and gaining traction within individual organisations, but that the importance of data sharing is an area that needs more focus. “When you start joining up data and looking across sectors, it opens up people’s minds to be willing to share data which can lead to increased shared benefits.”
During 2024 the aim for CReDo is to move from pilot to a national scale across several sectors, and to develop opportunities for creating a commercially sustainable product.
“We risk catastrophic failure if we choose not to try to understand the complex network effects across infrastructure sectors and organisations,” adds Chris. “That is the problem that CReDo is addressing.”
To find out more about CReDo visit the project page.
Article by Mike Walter, Connected Places Catapult.
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