[Brian Matthews]

Thanks everyone for your questions – that was really good.  

If you want to get in touch, see the DAFNI website: https://www.dafni.ac.uk/ , sign up for the newletter: info@dafni.ac.uk  or contact me on brian.matthews@stfc.ac.uk

regards

Brian

[Brian Matthews]

8 minutes ago, Nicholas said:

Hi Tom,

Thanks for this. Brian might add more into this – but just quickly.

These Digital Twin Talks are a good way to find out about some of these cornerstones. For example, the talk last week with the ODI was a great introduction to the data infrastructure needed to to support digital twins.

The video from the ODI talk is still available here: https://digitaltwinhub.co.uk/digital-twin-talks/

Many thanks

Nick

 

Thanks Nicolas – I think you could say that data + community + infrastructure form cornerstones.   We hopefully form a part of the infrastructure corner  – and other talks point to others.

Brian

[Brian Matthews]

HI Andrew,

Just now, Andrew Myers said:

I’d be keen to get the thoughts from @Brian and other group members on the pros/cons of DAFNI vs. public cloud providers (such as Azure/Amazon). Also the potential for linking twins hosted the two environments (which links in well with the discussion from the ODI talk last week).

This is a question we constantly ask ourselves – we provide computing for research of all sorts and its always a balance.  But we feel that there is continuing value of a specialist common hub with dedicated skills and resources for that community which can be shared.   We can use public cloud to expand out – again by having common interoperability standards that can be managed.   I am sorry, I missed the dicussion last week unfortunately – were there particular points there which came from that discussion?

thanks

Brian

 

[Brian Matthews]

Dear Mark,

1 minute ago, Guest Mark Jenkinson said:

Brian,

Many thanks for the presentation.  Are you engaging with any universities / organisations outside of the UK?

Thanks

Mark

Our University partners have extensive international connections.    A particularly interesting area is in international development through such funds as the Global Challenge Research Funds.   If we can plan good infrastructure in the UK we can also transfer that knowledge to the LMIC countries.   Also, we are working with researchers in related areas – such as food and agriculture.   On a level of computing infrastructure, my organisation (STFC) is highly engaged in international efforts to build research infrastructure and the communities around it.

thanks

Brian

[Brian Matthews]

2 minutes ago, Marion Samler said:

We will have city level data from our partners i.e. UKCRIC Urban Observatories.  This city level data relates to Newcastle, Sheffield, Bristol, and following these will will be looking to bring on data from Birmingham, Manchester and Cranfield.  

More on the Urban observatories can be found here: https://urbanobservatory.ac.uk/explore/ukcric  

We have done some hackathons with them and want to follow up  to extend DAFNI’s capabilty  to manage (near-) real-time data feeds.

[Brian Matthews]

4 minutes ago, Guest Yu(Steven) ZHANG said:

Hi Nick,

Thanks for the updates, geospatial data is an interesting and exciting area. I guess DAFNI may be able to help Geospatial Commission to <Building correlations between geospatial datasets>

https://geospatialcommission.blog.gov.uk/2020/04/23/building-correlations-between-geospatial-datasets/

Thank you – we have been in touch with teh geospatial commission, and would want to follow up more!

[Brian Matthews]

2 minutes ago, Guest Andrew Z said:

Brian, thank you. You have mentioned the legacy assets. What type of assets, DAFNI as a platform, mainly keeps – the new ones, which had digital model from the start, or legacy, which needed to be ‘digitised’ recently? 

Much of our current pilots have been on planning of new assets – e.g. where to place a new railway stations.  

But DAFNI is a flexible platform – it can support and connect models and data as are needed and can relate to both legacy and new assets – this is really driven by the needs of researchers and users.     So if you wish to explore legacy systems, then we are happy to support those too.

thanks

Brian

[Brian Matthews]

Hi Nick,

7 minutes ago, Nicholas said:

@Brian Matthews 

It would great to get your overall thoughts please on how  DAFNI contributes to providing the data infrastructure needed for digital twins please? 

Many thanks,

Nick

 

DAFNI provides an integration hub.  We have a metadata framework that allows us to bring together and link data sets from different sources within the same platform , with a base of rcapturing datasets, geospatial and sensor data, and extensions for domain metadata.   We would then support the work of for example the National Digital Twin Programme commons .    We want to provide a place for people to link, share and exchange data.

Brian

[Brian Matthews]

Hi Steven,

5 minutes ago, Guest Yu(Steven) ZHANG said:

Hi Brian,

Good to know DAFNI is planning to publish a metadata framework. Will there be any data/tools/models to be made publicly accessible via DAFNI?

It will be good to see some contextual and public available data be integrated and made availble via DAFNI, for example, some commonly used geospatial data http://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/  and data sets that can be linked to these spatial identifers/objects. 

Steven

And reagarding geoportal – we are talking to the Office of National Statistics, have some of their open data and discussing how we might collaborate more closely on accessing some of their more sensitive data.    Geospatial data is an area of major interest for us.

Brian

[Brian Matthews]

Hi Steven,

1 minute ago, Guest Yu(Steven) ZHANG said:

Hi Brian,

Good to know DAFNI is planning to publish a metadata framework. Will there be any data/tools/models to be made publicly accessible via DAFNI?

It will be good to see some contextual and public available data be integrated and made availble via DAFNI, for example, some commonly used geospatial data http://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/  and data sets that can be linked to these spatial identifers/objects. 

Steven

We will allow public/open data sets to be available through DAFNI – but we are also very aware of the licencing conditions and sensitivities of data.  So we would respect the data owners and allow them to release data as they want.  We would want to promote the FAIR principles – as open as possible, as closed as necessary.

Brian

 

[Brian Matthews]

Hello Andrew,

2 minutes ago, Guest Andrew Z said:

Hello Brian,

Thank you for presentation.  Digital twins and networks of twins are obviously very exciting and promising concepts. But currently twins still exist for some selected assets only. Often in a ‘premium sector’ of B2B market. What do you believe may be main factors holding those technologies from becoming vastly popular. Scaling, so to speak, to the mass market? 

regards,

Andrew 

I think that there are business and technological barriers – which are interrealated.

Twins are currently bespoke – which means that you need a strong value proposition to invest, whcih may be rare.  But as standard use cases develop, for example pretentitive maintenance, then the should become more standard and commoditised.   Twins also need to be factored into the total cost of the asset from the start – which is more difficult to add to legacy assets.   Technologically, we also need better data and interoperability standards to make components within an asset base more plug-and-play.

thanks

Brian

[Brian Matthews]

Hi Lawrence,

7 minutes ago, Lawrence Chapman said:

I am currently work on a large rail project across the north of England. We are currently at the design stage , where we would like to understand the carbon impact of different design options. eg Embeded Carbon from built assets (capCarb)  plus operational carbon (OpCarb) from different design options eg line speed, journey time, electrification options.  Does DAFNI have any data sets that could aide the decision making of this optioneering process?

Lawrence

We are working with partners who are interesting in this topic.  We are looking at  a project which is looking environmental resiliance which starts later this year.   And we have other partners who aer interested in transport and air quality , energy distribution- and decarbonisation is a key issue.  DAFNI may not hold data directly,  but is a good place to link, access and bring data together from different sources  –  climate data for example.  If you would like, we could follow on this and see if we could find interested partners.

thanks

Brian

[Brian Matthews]

Hi Keith,

2 minutes ago, Guest Keith Deaney said:

Are the metadata framework requirements available for download?  Is there any guidance on the requirements of this data prior to circulation of models? And what standards are these requirements based?

 

Thanks

Keith

We are currently working on our current release – we’ll publish the details of the metadata framework with release.   We are using a standard for capturing metadata on datasets call DCAT and combining that with Geospatial and sensor standards.    The metadata should be extensible fro different domains.   Would there be any standards you would like to see included?

thanks

Brian

[Brian Matthews]

HI Simon,

4 minutes ago, Guest Simon Scott said:

Hi Brian,

Is there a third category of digital twins: historical? These capture what happened to the physical entities and enable learning and assurance?

Kind Regard

Simon

An interesting question.   These would be like predictive twins – but the feedback into the physical system is less direct.  Certainly you nwould want to run twin models over historic data for learning and assurance – and also to validate your models.

Brian