From Concept to Reality: How Digital Twins Are Transforming Birmingham and Wolverhampton

A National Policy Moment, a Regional Tech Reality

Digital twins – virtual replicas of real-world assets that model their behaviour – have moved from a lab curiosity to a frontline planning tool. In the West Midlands, they are already steering traffic, guiding net-zero retrofits, and shaping new neighbourhoods. Crucially, this transformation is being driven by a close partnership between Connected Places Catapult and the region’s civic and academic leaders – including the University of Birmingham, Birmingham City University, Aston University, Wolverhampton University and Birmingham and Wolverhampton city councils¹. This local progress dovetails with the UK’s new Modern Industrial Strategy, which highlights city-regions like the West Midlands as “engines of the modern economy.” Raising their productivity to the national average could add on the order of £70–90 billion a year to UK GVA². The West Midlands is poised to deliver on this promise.

Through Connected Places Catapult’s DIATOMIC Digital Accelerator (part of the UKRI West Midlands Innovation Accelerator), 36 SMEs have piloted twin-enabled services already, unlocking £23 million in co-investment to date³ . Now a fresh £100k fund is open for the next cohort (applications close 31 August 2025). Regional leaders are enthusiastic. “The West Midlands is filled with innovative companies… Both these areas (Birmingham and Wolverhampton) have huge potential – together they’re forecast to stimulate tens of thousands of jobs,” notes Alan Welby, Managing Director for Built Environment and Local Growth at Connected Places Catapult⁴. The DIATOMIC accelerator aligns with the “It Starts in the West Midlands” growth campaign and with new Whitehall funding streams aimed at boosting regional innovation⁵ . In short, DIATOMIC is emerging as the “delivery engine” turning national policy goals into on-the-ground pilots – backed by an alliance of local partners ensuring these pilots have deep community roots.

How DIATOMIC Answers the Industrial Strategy

Each of DIATOMIC’s challenge areas maps directly onto a lever in the Modern Industrial Strategy – meaning local SMEs can ride a wave of new public investment. For example:

• Traffic flow & active travel in Birmingham: The government’s new £10 billion Transport for City Regions fund aims to unclog city congestion. Digital twins that simulate traffic signal timings or cycling “green waves” can make that transport spend go further by optimising flow in advance. Birmingham City University’s work on the city’s mobility digital twin – a model fed by over 300 sensors across the city’s roads⁶ – sets the stage for these efficiencies. For instance, Chattanooga’s city-scale traffic twin (integrating data from 500 sources like cameras, 911 calls, and weather) showed up to 30% improvement in traffic flow⁷ , and Shanghai’s municipal twin has helped cut congestion by up to 20%⁸ – benchmarks Birmingham intends to match. By pairing its mobility twin with that £10bn transport pot, Birmingham could scale these gains: each simulated signal plan saves fuel, slashes emissions, and frees up bus lanes that the public purse is funding.
• Underground infrastructure & strategic sites: The Strategy has a new £600 million Strategic Sites Accelerator to fast-track land remediation and grid upgrades on brownfield sites. A digital “X-ray” twin that maps buried pipes and cables can de-risk those very sites targeted by the fund, preventing costly surprises. In Birmingham’s Knowledge Quarter, for example, a DIATOMIC challenge is seeking innovative ways to map underground utilities to speed up development decisions. A twin that uncovers hidden infrastructure constraints ensures the £600m is spent wisely, guiding excavations and utility upgrades to where they’re needed most – before spades hit the ground.
• Net-zero retrofits & building optimisation: A £500 million Local Innovation Partnerships Fund is being rolled out to grow place-based net-zero clusters⁹. Solutions like Novoville’s Shared Works retrofit digital twin – incubated through DIATOMIC – show how local SMEs can leverage such funding. Novoville’s platform creates a digital twin of housing stock to manage and coordinate retrofitting; after proving its approach in DIATOMIC, it secured a six-figure Birmingham City Council contract to help upgrade hundreds of homes with energy-efficiency measures ¹⁰ . That kind of success can be scaled nationally. Likewise, one accelerator challenge focuses on Aston University’s Woodcock Building, using a twin to maximise energy efficiency and climate resilience in a real-world campus lab¹¹ – a model that can tap the £500m fund and be replicated across other public buildings striving for net-zero.
• AI-driven planning for new homes in Wolverhampton: HS2 is expected to unlock 41,000 new homes in the West Midlands¹², and Wolverhampton’s Green Innovation Corridor alone aims for 9,300 homes in the next five years. A DIATOMIC challenge is deploying AI-driven planning twins that let officials drop a proposed building into a city-scale model and instantly see impacts on traffic, air quality, and grid load. This could shave months off each planning cycle – a game-changer for meeting housing targets tied to HS2’s growth. Industry evidence backs this approach: BMW’s virtual factory twin cut production planning time (and cost) by ~30%, and digital twins helped Los Angeles agencies coordinate major infrastructure projects faster by working off a shared real-time model. In Wolverhampton’s case, a planning twin means faster approvals and fewer surprises with utilities, de-risking development so that homes can be delivered on schedule and to net-zero standards. Notably, Wolverhampton City Council and the University of Wolverhampton are key collaborators in this initiative – their local knowledge and data are helping shape the twin to ensure it addresses real on-the-ground challenges in the Green Innovation Corridor. By aligning with these policy levers, DIATOMIC offers SMEs a springboard: it plugs local innovators directly into big national missions (zero-carbon homes, smarter transport, etc.), ensuring West Midlands pilots are first in line for scale-up funding as those missions roll out nationwide.

Smoother Traffic, Cleaner Air in Birmingham

Birmingham provides a vivid proof of concept for city digital twins. In collaboration with Birmingham City University and Siemens, the city has developed a live mobility twin fed by over 300 sensors that now lets engineers trial “what-if” traffic signal plans in software before tweaking any real junction¹³. Since the city launched its Clean Air Zone in 2021, early data shows significant improvement: roadside NO₂ levels fell by around 17% on average (versus a 2019 baseline) and the percentage of the highest-polluting vehicles entering the city centre dropped by about 50%¹⁴. “Digital twins are really innovative… using real-time data we can see what works and where the problems are; that way we can invest intelligently, confident of results that will help our residents,” says Councillor Majid Mahmood, Birmingham’s cabinet member for Environment and Transport¹⁵. In other words, the twin allows the city to target interventions that deliver measurable clean-air gains, rather than relying on trial-and-error on live streets.

These results aren’t happening in isolation. Other cities have demonstrated the upside of traffic twins: in Chattanooga, Tennessee, integrating data from hundreds of sources into a digital twin yielded up to 30% improvements in traffic flow and energy efficiency¹⁶. Shanghai’s city-wide twin is credited with a 20% reduction in congestion for commuters¹⁷. Birmingham’s twin, paired with the Strategy’s new £10bn transport funding, aims to emulate these successes. Every optimised signal timing “green wave” or redesigned cycle lane tested in the twin can translate to smoother journeys on the ground – saving fuel, reducing emissions, and maximising the impact of transport investments already being made. With congestion and air pollution a top concern for Birmingham City Council, the ability to experiment virtually means the city can roll out only those measures that data shows will move the needle on traffic and air quality. The close partnership between the council and BCU’s researchers (who have been analysing the Clean Air Zone through an “ecosystem of digital twins”bcu.ac.uk) ensures that policy decisions are backed by rigorous local data analysis.

Cutting Energy Waste, Building Resilience

In its first phase, the DIATOMIC programme – led on its energy strand by the University of Birmingham – built a detailed 3D digital twin of East Birmingham’s energy network, mapping every substation, electric vehicle charger, and heat network loop in the area¹⁸ . Using this twin, a pilot at Tyseley Energy Park pinpointed where to deploy district heating pipes or solar-powered EV charging hubs for the biggest carbon-reduction “bang for buck.” “The model paves the way for a new way of understanding the complex urban environment,” says Professor Martin Freer, director of the University of Birmingham’s Energy Institute, emphasizing how integrated data can reveal optimal paths to decarbonization. In practical terms, this means city planners can now visualise, for example, how adding a large solar array or a battery storage unit would affect the local grid and carbon output – before committing capital. It de-risks the business case for green infrastructure.

Global case studies underline the potential. At Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), a campus-wide digital twin integrating energy usage data identified strategies that trimmed power consumption by 31%, cutting 9,600 tons of CO₂ annually. Meanwhile, IKEA applied a digital twin across 37 of its stores in East Asia (covering 42 million sq. ft. and 6,000 HVAC assets) and managed to reduce HVAC energy use by 30% within nine months¹⁹. These are massive efficiency gains and cost savings – achieved by using twin simulations to optimise systems that were previously run on experience and guesswork.

Here in the West Midlands, similar innovation is underway. Aston University, for example, is deploying a digital twin to improve the performance and lifespan of a new hydrogen fuel-cell facility on its campus – a project aiming to make on-site clean energy more reliable. And in the DIATOMIC accelerator, one challenge focuses on the Woodcock Building (a clean growth incubator at Aston University) to create a building-performance twin that drives it toward net-zero operation²⁰. By modelling heating, cooling, and occupancy in a 3D twin, the goal is to slash energy waste and smooth out demand peaks. This aligns perfectly with the Industrial Strategy’s pledge to bankroll anticipatory grid capacity and remediation on strategic sites: if a digital twin can show that a retrofitted building will need, say, an upgraded power supply or backup battery storage, those insights strengthen the case for infrastructure funding to support it.

We’ve already seen one SME’s twin go from pilot to procurement: Novoville’s Shared Works retrofit management platform, developed through DIATOMIC, created a digital workflow twin for home energy retrofits. It impressed Birmingham City Council enough to secure a contract covering an initial batch of 300 homes (scaling to 700 homes) for energy-efficiency upgrades. This not only benefits residents with lower bills and cosier homes, but validates the twin approach as a tool for local authorities to manage climate programs. It’s a pathway other SMEs can follow: prove the model locally, then expand. With the West Midlands now identified as a priority cluster for net-zero innovation funding, solutions proven here are well positioned to tap additional support and roll out in other regions.

Wolverhampton: Planning at Digital Speed

Wolverhampton’s Green Innovation Corridor is under pressure to deliver 9,300 new homes in the next five years to meet regional growth needs. Traditionally, planning a new housing development – modelling the traffic impact, checking utilities capacity, iterating site layouts – is a slow, serial process involving multiple agencies and data silos²¹. DIATOMIC is flipping that script by building a corridor-wide digital twin for planning and infrastructure. City planners will be able to insert a proposed apartment block or street configuration into the twin and watch in real time as the model updates traffic flows, parking demand, energy load, even flood risk. They can then tweak the proposal (building height, location, adding a green space, etc.) and immediately see the effects, rather than waiting months for separate transport and environmental reviews.

Industry examples show how much time this can save. BMW recently revealed that its virtual factory twin allows production planners to simulate assembly line changes entirely digitally – what used to take almost four weeks of physical testing now can be done in 3 days, and overall planning costs are projected to drop by up to 30%²². In urban planning, Los Angeles has piloted a city digital twin to coordinate multi-agency infrastructure projects, breaking down data barriers so that transit planners, utility engineers, and developers work off the same live model²³. That kind of integrated approach accelerated project timelines in L.A., avoiding the usual back-and-forth of fragmented studies. For Wolverhampton, shaving even a few months off each planning cycle could be the difference between meeting its ambitious housing targets or falling behind.

The urgency is amplified by HS2’s regional impact – by sparking new investments and better connectivity, HS2 is the “growth tide” expected to lift the West Midlands, including those 41,000 additional homes near its stations²⁴. A planning twin helps ensure Wolverhampton can capitalise on this tide, bringing shovel-ready projects forward faster and with greater certainty. Moreover, this effort is backed by Wolverhampton’s own civic and academic leaders. Wolverhampton City Council’s planning team and the University of Wolverhampton’s School of Architecture and Built Environment are closely involved in co-creating the corridor’s digital twin. Their collaboration guarantees that the twin is grounded in local reality – reflecting on-the-ground conditions around the University’s Springfield Campus (a key hub in the Green Innovation Corridor) – and that solutions from SMEs can be practically implemented in the city’s development pipeline. Because the Modern Industrial Strategy earmarks the West Midlands as a high-potential innovation cluster, successful digital twin pilots here are prime candidates for the next wave of funding from programs like the Local Innovation Partnerships Fund. In other words, if Wolverhampton demonstrates that a planning digital twin streamlines housing delivery, it strengthens the case for national investment to roll this technique out to other city-regions.

Your SME, National Ambitions

Government has made it clear it wants regional clusters to “identify and accelerate the highest-potential opportunities in each place.” The West Midlands is doing exactly that – and DIATOMIC is the mechanism making it happen. For local SMEs with an idea to improve city life through data and tech, this accelerator offers a powerful package of benefits:

• A state-of-the-art platform: The DIATOMIC programme provides access to live city data and a robust Azure Digital Twins backbone, so participants don’t need to build the digital infrastructure from scratch. You plug into an existing city-scale model that’s constantly updated – from traffic feeds to energy grids to IoT sensors – enabling you to focus on your value-add solution (whether it’s a clever AI algorithm or a user interface) rather than wrangling raw data. During phase 1 (2023–25), the platform already supported the development of three real-time twin use cases (traffic/air quality, hydrogen fuel cells, and energy systems) led by the region’s universities. Phase 2 (2025–26) is introducing new challenge areas co-designed with local partners in Birmingham and Wolverhampton, meaning the sandbox is rich with data and real use-case scenarios for innovators to tackle.
• Seed funding and support: Each selected SME gets £10k–£20k in pilot funding (from the £100k total pot) to develop and demonstrate their solution. More than the money, they receive tailored commercial and technical mentorship from Connected Places Catapult’s experts. This includes guidance on intellectual property, help navigating procurement with public authorities, and investor readiness training. Basically, you’ll have seasoned advisors ensuring your prototype can land real customers and follow-on investment.
• Real-world testbeds and networks: The accelerator is delivered in collaboration with Birmingham City Council, Wolverhampton City Council, and the region’s leading universities (University of Birmingham, Birmingham City University, Aston University, and University of Wolverhampton). SMEs therefore get direct lines to city decision-makers and data owners from day one. Want to pilot a new traffic AI at a busy Birmingham intersection or test an energy app with a Wolverhampton council housing block? The programme can open those doors. The West Midlands Combined Authority and Innovate UK are also involved, priming successful pilots to access additional funds (like the £500m local innovation fund and other regional pots) for scaling up. As Alan Welby puts it, “working alongside our partners, we’re closing funding gaps, reducing disparities and strengthening local supply chains” – meaning a good idea proven here has a pathway to extend across the region and beyond.

In short, DIATOMIC is a launchpad. “We’re excited to support pioneering solutions that promise great economic impact for the region,” Welby says. The opportunity for SMEs is to hitch a ride on a £90 billion national productivity mission with the West Midlands as the test bed. If your product can make West Midlands streets cleaner, or buildings smarter, or infrastructure more efficient, the framework now exists to prove it quickly and then multiply it.

Final Call: 31 August 2025

Time is short to get on board. Applications for the DIATOMIC Digital Accelerator close at midnight (BST) on 31 August 2025. Up to ten SMEs will be chosen, with a six-month programme kicking off on 8 October 2025 and running through March 2026. At least five of those will progress to funded trials in Birmingham or Wolverhampton, turning theory into practice on the ground. Along the way, participants will have access to guidance (there’s an application support webinar recording from 29 July, with slides and FAQs available on the programme site) and a host of contacts eager to see them succeed – from city planners looking for solutions, to utilities and investors seeking the next big idea in cleantech or smart cities.

This is your chance to transform your business and the West Midlands with a digital twin solution. The region offers an advanced urban testbed, strong public backing, and alignment with a £90 billion national growth agenda – all the ingredients to accelerate innovation. All that’s missing is your innovation. If you’re an SME with a vision for smarter mobility, cleaner energy, faster planning, or any urban challenge in between, now’s the moment to act. The West Midlands engine is revving up, powered by digital twin technology – and it starts with innovators like you.

Apply now for the DIATOMIC Digital Accelerator (via Connected Places Catapult) and turn your concept into reality on the streets of Birmingham and Wolverhampton. For guidance and to submit your proposal, visit the official opportunity page. Let’s deliver growth together – and show the UK how a region that toils in digital twin technology can lead the way in the modern industrial era.

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