The mission of DIATOMIC is to empower cities through advanced data-driven decision making, foster economic growth, and ensure prosperity is accessible to all communities. This vision aligns with Birmingham's 2040 Future City Plan, which aims to create "an innovative global city where prosperity is shared by all".

Led by Connected Places Catapult, DIATOMIC brings together a consortium of academic institutions, local government, and industry partners to create a more connected, efficient, and sustainable urban landscape. The project represents a strategic investment in the West Midlands' digital future, developing cutting-edge digital twin applications that will revolutionize how Birmingham manages its urban environment.

Key Concepts

Digital Twin Technology

According to BS ISO/IEC 30173:2023, a digital twin is a "digital representation... of a target entity... with data connections that enable convergence between the physical and digital states at an appropriate rate of synchronization". In the context of DIATOMIC, digital twins are virtual replicas of physical objects, processes, or systems that mirror their real-world counterparts in a digital environment.

Federated Digital Twin (FDT)

DIATOMIC is moving toward the concept of a Federated Digital Twin – an approach that integrates multiple digital twins while maintaining their independence. This framework enables seamless collaboration across academia, industry, and local authorities while ensuring sustainable and scalable deployment.

Composable Architecture

Unlike traditional layered architectures that can become monolithic and difficult to manage, DIATOMIC employs a microservices-based approach with modular building blocks. As James Bellingham from Siemens Advanta explains: "We've broken down the different elements into modular building blocks that could be built by different partners... and communicate between them with APIs in an API-driven approach".

Building Blocks

Nine common elements have been identified as essential "building blocks" in the DIATOMIC Digital Twin platform: 3D Visualization, Asset Management, Predictive Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Authorization Methods, Access Control, APIs, and Sensors.

Mechanisms

Consortium Structure

DIATOMIC is led by Connected Places Catapult in partnership with:

• Aston University

• Birmingham City University

• University of Birmingham

• Birmingham City Council

• Birmingham Chambers of Commerce

Siemens Advanta serves as the key technical partner in platform development, with the condition that "they're developing it in a way that is open to everyone... subject to using certain technical standards which are going to allow for compatibility".

Platform Development Approach

The platform architecture is designed to maximize reusability, allowing one organization's innovations to be utilized by others, while also ensuring exchangeability – the ability to swap out components as long as they maintain the same APIs and communication standards.

Accelerator Program

Beyond the core digital twin platform, DIATOMIC includes an accelerator program that connects small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with real challenges faced by Birmingham City Council. This initiative provides funding and support for trials, helping innovative companies test their solutions in real-world scenarios.

International Partnerships

DIATOMIC is strengthening Birmingham's international connections, particularly with Ulsan, South Korea – a city with its own advanced smart city initiatives. This partnership explores opportunities for a common data exchange platform between the twin cities.

Examples

DIATOMIC currently focuses on three complementary digital twin use cases:

Traffic and Air Quality (Birmingham City University)
More than 300 sensors across Birmingham help researchers analyse the impact of the city's Clean Air Zone, launched in June 20211. Professor Abdel-Rahman Tawil explains: "By creating an ecosystem of digital twins across the city, we'll be able to analyse air quality data and assess the impact of the Clean Air Zone, three years after its introduction".

Energy Systems and Infrastructure (University of Birmingham)
The University of Birmingham is developing a digital twin focused on energy systems optimization that ingests and integrates diverse publicly available datasets to analyse housing performance and energy network capacity across urban areas. Led by Dr. Grant Wilson, their approach centres on developing advanced tooling techniques for workflow management and data ingestion across different geographical scales, time frames, and data types, while employing predictive analytics specifically tailored for energy and built environment applications. The digital twin enables sophisticated "what-if" scenario modeling that goes beyond current conditions to predict the impacts of changes such as property retrofits, smart home implementations, and clean air zone initiatives. Through innovative visualization tools including localized Sankey diagrams, the system helps diverse stakeholders understand energy flows and patterns, supporting evidence-based decision-making for decarbonization efforts while providing the foundation for multi-vector interactive visualization that can be scaled across wider geographical areas.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells (Aston University)
This application creates a digital twin of hydrogen fuel cells for electric vehicles, predicting how usage impacts fuel cells over time. It aims to predict remaining useful life, guide maintenance decisions, and increase cell life while improving sustainability and efficiency.

International Digital Twin Integration

The Smart Campus DT (Aston University) and international Traffic Simulation DT use case by the University of Ulsan, South Korea, demonstrate the platform's capability to adopt new challenge-led use cases and establish principles for creating a generic data exchange platform.

References