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I am considering starting a network for topics related to Lifecycle V&V (Validation and Verification) centred on Evaluation and Testing, and this message is to poll the level of potential interest. I imagine the network would offer the following: · A place for Test Engineers from different market sectors to share experiences and gain knowledge · Support for those areas where DT activity is low but growing, the Defence Sector is an example, to benefit from the experiences of other sectors Test Engineers have a mix of technical and customer skills that are central to successful project implementation. The DT concept provides a lifecycle project-thread that provides Test Engineers with an unprecedented opportunity to exercise their skills. Maybe finding a way to maximise this opportunity might also attract more people to the career, and be a way to improve recruitment into the world of Engineering? If we launch this Network, would you consider joining it? Dave Murray

Click here for video As citizens and professionals we accept that the planning process is there to uphold standards of safety, aesthetic, technical and social requirements. However, the planning process has suffered from many years of tinkering and making good. We now have a planning process that is dependent on outdated approaches and incompatible with the rest of the development industry. It is slow, which presents problems in the UK where we need to build, a lot, quickly. Planning risks preventing this building from happening at pace and of a higher quality. This situation presents, of course, a golden opportunity for a fully digitised end-to-end process which could: reduce the planning bottleneck automate those parts of the process that can be Increase transparency of the process open up new means of engaging stakeholders with the planning process, by for example visualising proposed developments and so increasing understanding allow us to see projects in context, with other proposed developments, rather than in isolation allow access to, and sharing of, crucial data (like structural and fire safety information) facilitate the use of modern methods of construction most importantly, give a more accurate understanding of build costs and timescales In order to bring this about, we have to standardise and digitise (as far as it is possible and desirable) the rules under which designs are created, assessed, and ultimately built. At the same time we have to find ways to generate and use interoperable data. This problem is what the group from Bryden Wood, 3D Repo, London Borough of Southwark and CDBB have been working on. We have developed a model which is open and based on the established BIM Collaboration Framework (BCF). It presents the data associated with planning so that it can be queried and interrogated. You can see a summary in the video above and read more about it here; Planning Golden Thread statement attached below 3DRepo technical write up Bryden Wood technical write up Bryden Wood Schema We know that many of the barriers associated with a change like this will be cultural rather than technical so we are seeking partners in the planning and development system who would like to test the model and collaborators who would like to fund the next stage of development. Please get in touch! You can also hear more about this on the Gemini Call on Tuesday, 18 May at 10:30 with Miranda Sharp and Jack Ricketts of Southwark Council. Link to DT Hub Calendar

Webinar: Digital Twins in Water Utility Operations – Introducing OpenFlows WaterSight Bentley’s new water infrastructure digital twin solution, OpenFlows WaterSight, connects SCADA, GIS, hydraulic modeling, and customer information into a single interoperable dashboard. Register for this webinar to see how a scalable cloud-based environment can provide your entire utility access into the detection of critical system and individual asset performance information, enhancing operations and maintenance planning decisions. Bentley product success consultant Joel Johnson will share new ways to mirror and simulate current water-system conditions and performance, so you can: · Confidently share detailed graphics of current network performance, as well as the expected consequences and improvement for actions related to operational and maintenance activity · Monitor flow, pressure, and water quality conditions at every point in the system · Improve energy efficiency leveraging real-time analyses of each pump and tank, with alerts for when performance is outside of service thresholds. https://goto.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1353076&tp_key=281cc43d58

Tech Talk: Seeing Double – How Digital Twins Overcome the Challenges of Water Network Monitoring and Forecasting Watch Dr. Tom Walski, Bentley Fellow, as he shares how water utilities can overcome the challenges of operating their networks with OpenFlows WaterOPS—Bentley’s complete predictive modeling and scenario management solution for real-time water network operations, maintenance, and forecasting. https://www.bentley.com/en/perspectives-and-viewpoints/topics/tech-talk/2019/tech-talk-seeing-double-how-digital-twins-overcome-the-challenges-of-water-network-monitoring

Autonomous vehicles require digital maps to navigate safely, smart cities requires knowledge of urban features to be managed appropriately, and digital twins require physical assets to be recognised before they can simulate predictive models. All those applications require a detailed representation and understanding of the spatial environment. The ability to create intelligent 3D models of the real world is a critical enabler for the reduction in cost and programme of major design activities. For instance, Highways England is one of the pioneers in developing parametric design solutions for complex national infrastructure. Working together with the Alan Turing Institute and the University of Oxford, Sensat opened up some of our data to look at collaborating and building on the last two years of working at the cutting edge of 3D computer vision as part of our mission to teach computers to understand the real world. Great read if you have some time and as we continue to explore creating full digital models of existing assets - advancements in AI and data segmentation will allow us to truly create replicable models of real infrastructure, cities, and more. https://www.turing.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2020-06/the_alan_turing_institute_data_study_group_final_report_-_sensat_0.pdf the_alan_turing_institute_data_study_group_final_report_(Sensat).pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyIwEwEfqFA Interesting application regarding the monitoring of people movements for supporting coronavirus management at St Pancras station in real-time. Interesting to hear viewpoints regarding whether or not we fully recognise this as a Digital Twin in not.

One of the things that we discovered here at Highways England shortly after starting work on our Ontology (see previous post) was that there isn't a huge provision of COTS tools to help you visualise your Ontology, and consequently human readability suffers once you move past a few dozen entities and relationships. Moreover, a key Ontology-building tool (WebProtege) isn't really a commercial offering at all, and as such will probably never be Enterprise-ready (and indeed could go down at any moment!). Other tools such as WebVOWL seem to have paused at the 'nice idea' stage of development, and in general the real development in the market appears to be in the graph database space (Neo4j, Grakn, Stardog) rather than the Ontology-building space. There certainly isn't, as I had hoped, a fully configured GUI where you can filter and dynamically edit your Ontology as you would a mind map without having to resort to form-filling. If we want our Ontology to function as a schema for a graph database, and that graph database in turn to provide the data storage and logical underpinning of the Digital Twin (and the interface between twins) then limitation to the visualisation and management of our Ontology will consequently limit the functionality and acuity of our Digital Twin. Key to making this logic work is being able to clearly visualise and edit Ontologies because that will in turn dictate the relationships that it’s possible to model in the Twin. There isn’t really a COTS product that fully fits this brief at the moment, but we have undertaken some research (attached) to assess the market and identify where some investment in products could fill this gap (and indeed wrote some code to make our current tool of choice, Web Protégé, work slightly better). It would make sense to me that if we are seeking alignment in how we create and interface Ontologies, then it makes sense that we also work towards a common toolkit for their creation, maintenance, and visualisation. The attached PowerPoint describes our market evaluation to date, including where we feel that there is opportunity to augment WebProtege, as well as the obvious opportunity posed by Neo4j Bloom. It seems to me that if we, as a sector, are investing in the creation of Digital Twins, then we should think about how we can work together to build capability in the market to make these tasks easier and more scalable. A common toolkit will reduce our individual investments, whilst maximising the value that we obtain from development. What do you think? Ontology_Visualisation_Proof_of_Value_(HE).pdf

Hi all, Alasdair Rae of University of Sheffield has published a blog piece about travel within 26 cities using open data to visualize how far can you travel from to reach a central train station by 08:45 on a Monday morning. http://www.statsmapsnpix.com/2020/03/45-minute-cities.html The ability to produce this visualization seems very relevant to the NDT programme. Particularly if you could simulate traffic interventions to see how it improved access across the city. Cardiff has fared quite well. How has your city performed?