• General Discussion

  Cyber-Physical Infrastructure Vision Launch

  Posted by Tammy Au on February 18, 2022 at 10:59 am

  The Cyber-Physical Infrastructure Vision was launched in a webinar on the 11th February 2022 on the DT Hub. Watch the webinar and read the vision:

  The vision for this Cyber-Physical Infrastructure was published on 11 February 2022 and is available on the gov.uk website via the following link. Read the press release here.

  Humanity faces pressing planetary scale challenges including the climate emergency, resilience to unexpected shocks, consumption, security, healthcare, food, and many others. The UK punches above its weight but we are competing with other countries with more data, more resources, more money and sometimes political advantages too. So as a nation we need to find new ways to create leverage and defensible competitive advantage.

  To respond to these challenges and opportunities, we need to reframe the concept of infrastructure. This is not just buildings, roads, railways and fibre broadband to rural communities, it is also the enabling cyber-physical infrastructure that is often overlooked. Big vertical initiatives and missions lack the time, budget, capabilities and often the vision to build this infrastructure for themselves, let alone to support other initiatives. Companies like Ocado, Rolls-Royce, Arup and Mott MacDonald are successful demonstrators of the transformative power of this cyber-physical infrastructure but they are the exceptions that we now need to make the norm.

  So a growing coalition of the willing, led by the Robotics Growth Partnership have been engaging with the government and other stakeholders on a vision for a national Cyber-Physical Infrastructure. Harnessing the power of technologies such as data, Internet of Things, synthetic environments, digital twins, smart machines and living labs, in combination with the tools, infrastructure and recipes that will enable us to work smarter, faster, with less risk and at lower cost.

  There were many interesting questions posed during the webinar that we did not have time to answer. We have collated the questions and provided answers here. Please do continue the discussion in the chat.

   

  Q&A Questions

  How will cyber-physical infrastructure be deployed and adapted for rural communities?

  • A cornerstone of CPI is that it should be available by anyone from anywhere
  • CPI has important applications within the levelling-up agenda, such as immersive environments for education, training and re-skilling
  • Also cyber-physical campuses which would take the form of physical spaces but with immersive remote access, that pull together a blend of many different stakeholders including researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, regulators, students and the general public

   

  How and where do you see this overlapping with the recent surge of interest in the metaverse?

  • The large technology companies and hyperscalers have different and often competing visions for what these virtual worlds might look like and the services they would provide. They have a different motivation for consumers to hold the attention and capture the data of consumers to generate ad-based revenues
  • As we talked about in the presentation, we see CPI as probably having links with these metaverses but also fundamental differences particularly in terms of the underlying purpose
  • CPI would embrace the concept of virtual worlds as immersive spaces for learning, collaborative innovation and problem solving, providing access to greater diversity of thought, skills and experience. As digital twins these virtual words would also run in lock-step with the real world
  • These virtual worlds could have an important role to play in tackling climate change buy helping to drive great understanding of the climate impact of the personal decisions we make as citizens and to nudge our behaviours at a planetary scale

   

  There are a lot of terms flying around to describe similar concepts of uniting the physical and digital worlds: metaverse, Web3…how is the cyber-physical fabric infrastructure vision distinct?

  • See 2) above
  • Web3.0 as a decentralised approach presents both opportunities and challenges for example in frictionless contracting and governance. It’s still to be determined how Web3.0 could or should be incorporated

   

  Any concerns around emergent behaviour? Interconnected machine intelligent cyber-physical systems could have unknown consequences as complexity increases. If a cyber-physical system causes human injury what are the legal implications?

  • This question was answered during the fireside chat
  • We fully expect emergent behaviour. Within virtual worlds and digital twins we will be federating models of complex non-linear dynamical systems whose behaviours depend on initial conditions. The butterfly effect is the classic example. We are already contemplating deployment of large AI systems (>10B parameters) that demonstrate emergent properties. In both cases, imaginative forms of Governance are needed.

   

  Is there a consideration to use Open Standards in this area such as the use of the Open Connectivity Foundation standards

  • Yes, the concept of shared open standards is central to the CPI vision
  • For example, standards for the smart glue for connecting digital twins, AI models and smart machines built by different organisations, with different technologies and for different purposes
  • Understanding which existing standards can be adopted (eg. OCF)  and which must be invented is part of the puzzle

   

  Is the Iso21597 taken into this, as a possible way to separate data from applications to ensure access on a long term perspective?

  • Separation of data from applications is definitely important but we have not considered specific standards for achieving that such as ISO21597. Archiving asset data throughout its lifecycle is clearly important.

   

  Commercial sensitivities, liabilities and concerns over IP rights, often act as barriers to collaboration between organisations who will need to work together. How do overcoming these challenges fit into the CPI vision?

  • We talked a little about this during the fireside chat
  • We believe that pre-competitive shared building blocks could accelerate the development of AI models, digital twins and smart machines, allowing the users of these building blocks to focus on where they can add value to achieve defensible competitive advantage
  • New delivery vehicles will probably be required to develop these building blocks to ensure they are secure and of enterprise grade, and yet can be publicly owned
  • Open APIs are the way to containerise and therefore both hide and protect IP in large systems development. Enterprise cloud uses such API technology extensively, and CPI should do the same

   

  When you rightly propose that this initiative should be made more global, is there a role for the United Nations to support and facilitate this proposal?

  • Tackling the challenges and opportunities we face as a species is much more than just a technology challenge
  • We need big, bold, holistic and long term visions for the future of our country, our planet and our species
  • We need new political, democratic and ethical frameworks to drive decisions and actions on behalf our planet, our species and indeed the ecosystem of species we coexist with, both now and on behalf of future generations
  • We need new ways of thinking, acting and collaborating that can transcend national borders and self interest, in order to drive innovation on behalf of our planet and our species rather than just the vested interests of nations and shareholders
  • Given how late we have left it, we need new tools to enable us to solve these challenges smarter, faster, safer, cheaper and with greater coordination, collaboration and diversity of thought
  • Governance will be an important element of all this but it’s not clear (to us anyway!) whether the United Nations could provide that or whether we need new institutions

   

  A great vision and ambition for the UK. Experience tells us that technology itself is rarely the challenge, it’s more common to encounter complexity in integrating multiple domains (both business and technology) which span many different vendors. This brings the need for new commercial frameworks to be facilitated which Industry can adopt and leverage. How will this sensitive area be addressed within this proposal?

  Yes, see 7) and 😎 above

  The open and shared development approach is the starting point. There are several examples of open development projects that have subsequently been licensed by commercial organisations to provide a finished and stable product that is maintained.

  Like the internet and the web, once standards are established a variety of vendors can compete to provide the appropriate services middleware including DevOps. However the majority of the commercial competition and collaboration is anticipated to be between those who use the CPI services

   

  Re: Dame Wendy’s comment on Metaverse/big tech. I’m interested in your thoughts on the interplay between ‘big tech’ and government driven innovation, particularly wrt to current short timescales for return on government innovation funding

  • With regards metaverse, see 2) above
  • Implementing the CPI vision would be an ambitious mission for the UK, but one that would be delivered in a number of agile steps, unlocking incremental benefits along the way
  • One of the initial steps would be to build the shared foundations, including the architecture and standards required to bake in interoperability, security, privacy, ethics and trust by design.
  • By using its convening power and investment in research and innovation to deliver these foundational elements, the government would stimulate crowdsourced innovation, venture investment and adoption by the private and public sectors
  • To be credible, these foundational elements have to simultaneously be realised and applied to early exemplar applications as demonstrators. Not only can their functioning and fitness for purpose be tested but also the recognizable advantages and benefits in applications of importance to the security and sustainability of the public can be demonstrated

   

  Great work David, Paul and everyone involved! What are the metrics that you want to track and hopefully achieve in the short/mid term?

  • Focus on CPI within academic research
  • Adoption of CPI by industry and public sectors, including a whole new generation of CPI start-ups and SMEs
  • Weaving of CPI into government policies and strategies
  • CPI being seen as an important strand of transforming the efficiency and scalability of our public services
  • KPI benefits in each of the domains of application – cheaper, faster, ease development or use
  • Extent to which the CPI vision ingredients and recipes have been employed and succeeded

   

  This is a great initiative Paul and David. Can you please elaborate on the idea of “federated digital twins”. I think this is both interesting and challenging. ie digital twins will evolve by industry but they are unlikely to be federated across platforms. Hence, I see that there is a gap here that can be addressed. But in practical terms what does it mean? Data, APIs and standards?

  • Digital twins will be built with different levels of abstraction and approximation, by different organisations, with different technologies and for different purposes
  • To tackle the optimisation and re-engineering of complex systems of systems, we will need to connect and federate these component digital twins both horizontally and vertically
  • For example connecting the digital twins of an aircraft airframe, its engines, its control surfaces and so on to create a digital twin of the complete aircraft; then connecting the digital twins of aircraft, airlines, air traffic control systems, airports and many others, to create a digital twin of the aviation sector
  • WIth federation comes the ability to use ontologies and reason across the entire DT network through query. This is ambitious and beyond current DT practice but will enhance the essential CPI features of transparency and operational understanding.
  • This will require the development of a digital commons in the form of shared standards, ontologies, interfaces and middleware to act as the smart glue that connects these digital twins. The Centre for Digital Built Britain are working on an Information Management Framework to do just that

   

  I am an enthusiast of the pre-mortem. If we imagine a future in which this attempt to become a world-leader in CPI and national-scale digital twins has failed, what do we think are the reasons why it failed?

  • Agreed, pre-mortems can be a great tool for trying to see around corners
  • However pre-mortems have the danger of throwing up so many obstacles that the task seems impossible with leadership and investors losing heart. Pre-mortems on revolutionary inventions such as the telegraph, railroad, internet, web and even fusion would not have helped their launch
  • The important thing is to break development down into manageable chunks that address specific aspect and test them
  • The most likely cause of UK failure is major development and closed standard creation by  the majors who drive community adoption in a way that suits their commercial objectives. Developments in linked data such as the Google Knowledge Graph from open semantic web ideas offer a precedent.

   

  What of the key issues that also needs to be considered is the fact that local government has no real understanding of this and therefore significant training is going to be needed for procurement teams to get to grips with this change and how they can develop new procurement models where data is at the heart of outcomes feeding into trusted research environments, has funding been assigned for this

  • A lack of knowledge and vision for the potential transformative impact of CPI is definitely an important issue we will need to overcome
  • The next stage on this CPI journey is the formal consultation process that government will be kicking off
  • Funding for CPI is a downstream consideration
  • Training staff to be able to use new technological developments is always part of the realisation journey, but downstream

   

  Re: Mark G’s building block comment. I agree but what’s stopping us doing that now? What’s needed

  • New delivery vehicles
  • New IP ownership, licensing and commercial models

   

  What is the possibility of publishing open data that allows innovators to test new ideas without having to solve all the difficulties associated with accessing proprietary data?

  Open data will be an important part

  However much of the most interesting data will not be open data. So we will need new mechanisms to support the granular, secure and controlled sharing of data – with whom, for what purposes and potentially at what cost

  Tackling complex problems and opportunities faster, cheaper and with lower risk will require us to build solutions based upon reusing existing components rather than starting from scratch

  This underscores the importance of the pre-competitive building blocks talked about in 7) above, and that the data sharing mechanisms will also be required for other digital assets such as digital twins, AI models, semantic maps and so

   

  As the cyber-physical world rapidly develops, it will render a significant number of human jobs – both skilled and unskilled – redundant. Accepting that many new (mostly highly skilled) jobs will also be created by the transition, it is likely that far more human jobs will eventually be lost, compared to those created. Unless societal and governmental interventions take place, this will become inevitable and will lead to greater economic inequality in society

  • The technological tide is coming in fast around the world and the UK cannot afford to play technological King Canute. If we do not take the lead in building CPI then others will
  • One of the very few insurance policies we have when it comes to the unintended consequences of new technology is education
  • We need to radically transform our education system to prepare future generations for the smarter and more automated world they will inherit
  • Both the internet and the web created more jobs than they took away. Not all are high tech. Many are more interesting and fulfilling. The CPI can be the same

   

  What interventions do we, as a nation, need to be considering and actioning now to facilitate a fairer and more prosperous outcome further down the line?

  • The CPI is one such as it seeks to democratise and level-up innovation and education and give us the prosperity we need to afford support measures of all kinds for the disadvantaged and less well off. However, these were also the principles of the early internet and web pioneers.
  • The lessons of the printing press, enlightenment and french revolution, repeated by the internet, social media and storming of Capitol Hill, teach us that flat networks without some hierarchical governance lead to revolution. So although the internet and web have been part of the exponential technology revolution of the last 200 years that have raised average standards of living enormously, key governance was lacking as it took place. Governance in the CPI will therefore be key.

   

  As an SME who has built a capability for federation and interoperability of data, how do we persuade the public sector of our competence as the public sector is risk averse to small SMEs, even getting funding is hap hazard

  • Innovate UK occasionally implements SBIRs, which can be a very effective way to connect SMEs and adapt the procurement behaviour of large organisations through co-creation. Government has been open to this in recent years, recognising its spending power as an innovation catalyst. However, there is some way to go. Challenge based innovation through ARIA may help move the needle

   

  What three enablers would you ask the government to implement without the need for it to spend money?

  • Without spending new money, the government can certainly convene around regulation, governance and standards. But it won’t have the cohesion and impact that brings in the venture backed rocket fuel and lights the blue touch paper

   

  Will CPI standards be _executable_ ‘recipes’, which I believe BSI currently may not, by their policy, deliver?

  • Playbooks of how to do things to the next level of effectiveness are in the jet-wash from major successes, described by innovators and pundits alike. The playbooks for Blitzscaling and venture investing are two such from recent years. Playbooks can be expected in the CPI also therefore as services evolve and are used, capturing good practice and ways to use it effectively.

   

  Will systems like cyber-physical ranges become more important as CPI develops with CNI included to ensure security of the CPI is maintained? Is this something that should be provided by specialists or in-house by government/defence?

  • The potential for disruption WHEN a working CPI is hacked is large. Both Government, defence and specialist organisations will be needed to secure and restore the CPI whilst dealing with incidents, according to sector and application

   

  Finally has there been a consideration towards the use of ForHumanity as a means of auditing the ethics and bias towards AI

  • Multiple organisations are establishing themselves as auditory authorities for  AI. Arguably there should be a regulatory authority to audit the auditors according to specific standards and requirements. This landscape is still evolving. ForHumanity seems a well presented and considerate organisation.

  Tammy Au replied 2 years, 9 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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