National Digital Twin Programme

The National Digital Twin Programme enters a new phase of collaboration with industry and academia.

Digital Twin Hub > National Digital Twin Programme

The National Digital Twin Programme (NDTP) was created by the UK Government in 2018 in response to the National Infrastructure Commission’s Report ‘Data for the Public Good’.

The programme is directly run by the Department for Business and Trade, in collaboration with industry and academia, and serves as a focal point to grow national capability in digital twinning. This capability will allow government, the broader public sector and other organisations providing services, to test decisions before they are implemented – drawing on right-time data from multiple sectors, understanding the implications and unintended consequences, and allowing freedom to optimise decisions for public benefit.

WORK PROGRAMME 2022-23

In the next financial year, the NDTP will:

  • Continue work on the development of the Information Management Framework and information interoperability
  • Begin to develop legal agreements to govern security-minded information sharing
  • Understand the need for and suitability of different visualisation tools
  • Continue work on the development of the supporting security standards, guidance, processes and tools
  • Engage with related work taking place across government, industry and academia

Demonstration Projects

Demonstrator work is a fundamental element of the socio-technical change aspects of the Programme.
The first of these demonstrators is based on the Isle of Wight.

ISLE OF WIGHT

Work undertaken at the end of 21-22 financial year tested baseline ability to:

  • Begin to combine information from multiple sources in a consistent structured format (ontology) and apply attribute-based security controls as required to that information where sensitive
  • Layer digital modelling tools over the top of this combined information in way that supports user engagement with the information between and across sectors to improve asset resilience planning, management and responsiveness

Demonstrator Case Studies

Work this financial year will build on this baseline to test and showcase the work of the NDTP in:

  • Infrastructure resilience, emergency planning and responsiveness through a demonstrator that aims to understand how digital twin technologies and processes can improve emergency response and help to increase the resilience of key assets and services.
  • Energy demand, use and supply through a demonstrator that aims to model the island’s electricity network, from the 132kV interconnectors to local 400V transformers.
  • Retrofitting in housing through a demonstrator that seeks to empower retrofitting companies and third sector organisations with accurate, data-driven mechanisms to quickly identify homeowners eligible for funding programmes.

Please visit the Department for Business and Trade web page for the latest updates.