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We all want the built environment to be safe and to last. However, minor movements over time from forces such as subsidence can impact how well our assets perform. It can also make connecting and modifying assets harder if they have shifted from the position in which they were built. If the assets are remote or hard to access, this makes tracking these small movements even more difficult. The latest instalment from the Digital Twin Journeys series is a video showing the construction and built environment sectors what they need to know about remote sensing and using satellite data, featuring the Construction Innovation Hub-funded research by the Satellites group based at the Universities of Cambridge and Leeds. Using satellite imaging, we may be able to detect some of the tell-tale signs of infrastructure failure before they happen, keeping services running smoothly and our built environment performing as it was designed over its whole life. You can read more from the Satellites project by visiting their research profile. This research forms part of the Centre for Digital Built Britain’s (CDBB) work at the University of Cambridge. It was enabled by the Construction Innovation Hub, of which CDBB is a core partner, and funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF).

Several Terms such as Digital Ecosystem, Digital Life, Digital World, Digital Earth have been used to describe the growth in technology. Digital twins are contributing to this progress, and it will play a major role in the coming decades. More digital creatures will be added to our environments to ease our life and to reduce harms and dangerous. But can we trust those things? Please join the Gemini call on the 29th of March; Reliability ontology was developed to model hardware faults, software errors, autonomy/operation mistakes, and inaccuracy in control. These different types of problems are mapped into different failure modes. The purpose of the reliability ontology is to predict, detect, and diagnose problems, then make recommendations or give some explanations to the human-in-the-loop. I will discuss about these topics and will describe how ontology and digital twins are used as a tool to increase the trust in robots. Trust in the reliability and resilience of autonomous systems is paramount to their continued growth, as well as their safe and effective utilisation. A recent global review into aviation regulation for BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) with UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) by the United States Congressional Research Office, highlighted that run-time safety and reliability is a key obstacle in BVLOS missions in all of the twelve European Union countries reviewed . A more recent study also highlighted that within a survey of 1500 commercial UAV operators better solutions towards reliability and certification remain a priority within unmanned aerial systems. Within the aviation and automotive markets there has been significant investment in diagnostics and prognostics for intelligent health management to support improvements in safety and enabling capability for autonomous functions e.g. autopilots, engine health management etc. The safety record in aviation has significantly improved over the last two decades thanks to advancements in the health management of these critical systems. In comparison, although the automotive sector has decades of data from design, road testing and commercial usage of their products they still have not addressed significant safety concerns after an investment of over $100 Billion in autonomous vehicle research. Autonomous robotics face similar, and also distinct, challenges to these sectors. For example, there is a significant market for deploying robots into harsh and dynamic environments e.g. subsea, nuclear, space etc which present significant risks along with the added complexity of more typical commercial and operational constraints in terms of cost, power, communication etc which also apply. In comparison, traditional commercial electronic products in the EEA (European Economic Area) have a CE marking, Conformité Européenne, a certification mark that indicates conformity with health, safety, and environmental protection standards for products sold within the EEA. At present, there is no similar means of certification for autonomous systems. Due to this need, standards are being created to support the future requirements of verification and validation of robotic systems. For example, the BSI standards committee on Robots and Robotic Devices and IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems (including P7009 standard) are being developed to support safety and trust in robotic systems. However, autonomous systems require a new form of certification due to their independent operation in dynamic environments. This is vital to ensure successful and safe interactions with people, infrastructure and other systems. In a perfect world, industrial robotics would be all-knowing. With sensors, communication systems and computing power the robot could predict every hazard and avoid all risks. However, until a wholly omniscient autonomous platform is a reality, there will be one burning question for autonomous system developers, regulators and the public - How safe is safe enough? Certification infers that a product or system complies with legal relevant regulations which might slightly differ in nature from technical or scientific testing. The former would involve external review, typically carried out by some regulators to provide guidance on the proving of compliance, while the latter usually refers to the reliability of the system. Once a system is certified, it does not guarantee it is safe – it just guarantees that, legally, it can be considered “safe enough” and that the risk is considered acceptable. There are many standards that might be deemed relevant by regulators for robotics systems. From general safety standards, such as ISO 61508, through domain specific standards such as ISO 10218 (industrial robots), ISO 15066 (collaborative robots), or RTCA DO-178B/C (aerospace), and even ethical aspects (BS8611). However, none of those standards address autonomy, particularly full autonomy wherein systems take crucial, often safety critical, decisions on their own. Therefore, based on the aforementioned challenges and state of the art, there is a clear need for advanced data analysis methods and a system level approach that enables self-certification for systems that are autonomous, semi or fully, and encompasses their advanced software and hardware components, and interactions with the surrounding environment. In the context of certification, there is a technical and regulator need to be able to verify the run-time safety and certification of autonomous systems. To achieve this in dynamic real-time operations we propose an approach utilising a novel modelling paradigm to support run-time diagnosis and prognosis of autonomous systems based on a powerful representational formalism that is extendible to include more semantics to model different components, infrastructure and environmental parameters. To evaluate the performance of this approach and the new modelling paradigm we integrated our system with the Robotics Operating System (ROS) running on Husky (a robot platform from Clearpath) and other ROS components such as SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) and ROSPlan-PDDL (ROS Planning Domain Definition Language). The system was then demonstrated within an industry informed confined space mission for an offshore substation. In addition, a digital twin was utilized to communicate with the system and to analysis the system’s outcome.

National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) has launched a world-first programme to build a digital replica of the entire GB energy landscape, creating a virtual environment to share data, model and predict scenarios that support the decarbonisation of the energy system. The Virtual Energy System will be a digital twin of the existing physical energy system, working in parallel to enable an accessible, unified, real-time view of every part of the GB energy system. This virtual environment will create the ability to generate insights and new ideas and model solutions to cut real-world carbon emissions, supporting the transition to net zero while delivering long-term value to industry and consumers. The programme comes at a time when Great Britain’s energy system is undergoing its most significant ever transition, and this announcement coincides with the annual COP26 UN climate change conference this year, taking place in Glasgow. How the Virtual Energy System will work: 1. The development of the Virtual Energy System begins with an open framework, with agreed access, operations and security protocols. 2. Over time, this will be populated by existing and new digital twins – replicas of physical components of the energy system. 3. Each digital twin will contribute to and access real-time data on the status and operation of other elements of the system. 4. This layered data will generate insight, and a virtual environment through which to innovate ideas, with the potential to transform the system and support the transition to net zero. National Grid ESO will be hosting a free-to-access one-day online conference on 1 December, providing an opportunity for the energy industry and wider stakeholders to find out more about the programme and how to get involved with its design and development. Panellists include Ofgem, BEIS, Energy Digitalisation Taskforce, Energy Systems Catapult and more. Interested parties can register for the conference here (https://uk.virtualeventhosts.com/virtualenergysystemconference2021/login) An industry consultation will be launched in December, and future industry events will be announced as the programme develops. Visit the Virtual Energy System webpage. (https://www.nationalgrideso.com/virtual-energy-system) For more information about the Virtual Energy System and how to be involved, email VirtualES@nationalgrideso.com.

A new infographic, enabled by the Construction Innovation Hub, is published today to bring to life a prototype digital twin of the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) on the West Cambridge campus. Xiang Xie and Henry Fenby-Taylor discuss the infographic and lessons learned from the project. The research team for the West Cambridge Digital Twin project has developed a digital twin that allows various formats of building data to function interoperably, enabling better insights and optimisation for asset managers and better value per whole life Pound. The graphic centres the asset manager as a decision maker as a vital part of this process, and illustrates that each iteration improves the classification and refinement of the data. It also highlights challenges and areas for future development, showing that digital twin development is an ongoing journey, not finite destination. The process of drawing data from a variety of sources into a digital twin and transforming it into insights goes through an iterative cycle of: Sense/Ingest - use sensor arrays to collect data, or draw on pre-existing static data, e.g. a geometric model of the building Classify - label, aggregate, sort and describe data Refine - select what data is useful to the decision-maker at what times and filter it into an interface designed to provide insights Decide – use insights to weigh up options and decide on further actions Act/Optimise - feed changes and developments to the physical and digital twins to optimise both building performance and the effectiveness of the digital twin at supporting organisational goals. Buildings can draw data from static building models, quasi-dynamic building management systems and smart sensors, all with different data types, frequencies and formats. This means that a significant amount of time and resources are needed to manually search, query, verify and analyse building data that is scattered across different databases, and this process can lead to errors. The aim of the West Cambridge Digital Twin research facility project is to integrate data from these various sources and automate the classification and refinement for easier, more timely decision-making. In their case study, the team has created a digital twin based on a common data environment (CDE) that is able to integrate data from a variety of sources. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema is used to capture the building geometry information, categorising building zones and the components they contain. Meanwhile, a domain vocabulary and taxonomy describe how the components function together as a system to provide building services. The key to achieving this aim was understanding the need behind the building management processes already in place. This meant using the expertise and experience of the building manager to inform the design of a digital twin that was useful and usable within those processes. This points to digital twin development as a socio-technical project, involving culture change, collaboration and alignment with strategic aims, as well as technical problem solving. In the future, the team wants to develop twins that can enhance the environmental and economic performance of buildings. Further research is also needed to improve the automation at the Classify and Refine stages so they continue to get better at recognising what information is needed to achieve organisational goals. You can read more from the West Cambridge Digital Twin project by visiting their research profile. This research forms part of the Centre for Digital Built Britain’s (CDBB) work at the University of Cambridge. It was enabled by the Construction Innovation Hub, of which CDBB is a core partner, and funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF). To see more from the Digital Twin Journeys series, see the homepage on the CDBB website.

The Climate Resilience Demonstrator (CReDo) project from the National Digital Twin programme is holding a webinar to launch the project to a global audience in conjunction with the COP26 climate conference on 2nd November at 10:30-12. This webinar replaces the weekly Gemini Call, and the DT Hub community are encouraged to sign up, as well as inviting their wider networks to attend. The climate emergency is here now, and connected digital twins are an important part of achieving net zero and climate resilience. The CReDo team will present how the project meets this urgent need, and will premiere two exciting outputs – a short film and an interactive visualisation of how connected data across three infrastructure networks can provide better insights and lead to better resilience of the system-of-systems overall. Only if we come together to securely share data across sectors can we plan a smarter, greener, more resilient built environment. Book your spot today! Keep an eye on the DT Hub website for updates about the CReDo programme.

The London Digital Twin Research Centre would like to extend an invitation to all the Digital Twin researchers and enthusiasts from industry and academia to attend our annual 2021 workshop which is held online on June 4th, 2021. This virtual “Workshop on Transforming Industry and Society with Digital Twins” brings together experts from industry and academia to share their valuable insights regarding the adoption of the Digital Twin technology across different industries, from structural health monitoring, pandemic management, smart campuses through to health and wellbeing. The domains covered in this event provide opportunities and research challenges that the future maturation of digital twin technology demands. The virtual workshop represents an excellent opportunity for networking for Digital Twin enthusiasts to share ideas for future developments in digital twins. Programme Free Eventbrite registration: Link Time/date: 10am-3:30pm on Friday 4th June 2021 DT workshop_June2021.pdf

Infrastructure projects inevitably cause impacts to our environment. The pressure is therefore on contractors to adhere to new policies using their own initiatives and tools. In addition to adhering to new net gains policies that will be released with the upcoming environment bill, other impacts of not considering our environment include project delays and increases in costs, and damage to a contractors social and sustainable reputation. Integrating GIS to current environmental planning methodologies improves on existing tools for evaluating and quantifying biodiversity and Natural Capital. By doing this we can visualise the areas that would potentially have the highest loss, and adapt the design to mitigate impacts and reduce those losses.

Enterprises creating digital twins have a need to understand the benefits their digital twins bring to their own operation but also the benefits which accrue to their customers, supply chain, local community, industry network and relevant government bodies.  An understanding and harnessing of these benefits has the potential to drive not only individual business cases but also impact regional development spend, regulatory price controls and national policy.  In response to this need, CDBB commissioned a piece of work to create a logic model to find a consistent way to describe the benefits of connecting digital twins.  That model has the potential to deliver both the forward view to guide investment decisions in connecting digital twins and also a retrospective assessment of the benefits achieved by connecting them. Read the CDBB blog, What is the point of a National Digital Twin?  to find out more about the logic model The NIC’s Data for the Public Good report and other publications have described benefits to the economy and enterprises from the sharing of data in a secure and resilient way.  As such, the National Digital Twin programme was set up to create the Information Management Framework to enable that secure resilient data sharing in the built environment and beyond.    The vision for the National Digital Twin is not a central repository of all data rather it is a ] principles principles based means to connect data or individual twins to create both public good and value.   The challenge is to understand where the greatest value can be created from the connection of individual twins.   The NDTp will be running a webinar on 20th October where we will discuss the challenges of valuing data assets, the good they deliver, and how connected digital twins may change the way we do business.   To receive the link to the webinar, register via Eventbrite; https://ndtbenefits.eventbrite.co.uk The Webinar will be held, 11:00 – 12:00, Tuesday 20th October, via Zoom Webinar Hosting and chairing the webinar will be the National Digital Twin programme’s Commons Stream Lead, Miranda Sharp. Joining Miranda will be a panel of experts; Leigh Dodds – ODI ; Leigh is Director of Delivery at the Open Data Institute. You can read about the ODI’s work on data institutions here: https://theodi.org/article/designing-sustainable-data-institutions-paper/   Herman Heyns – ANMUT Herman is CEO at Anmut and Member of Tech UKs Digital Twins Working Group. Anmut is a consultancy that enables organisations to manage data like any other asset. You can read more about how ANMUT value data on their website: https://anmut.co.uk/data-valuation-what-is-your-data-worth/ and https://anmut.co.uk/why-you-should-be-treating-your-data-as-an-asset/ Peter Vale – Thames Tideway; Peter has worked with a consortium at Tideway which has researched the benefits of digital transformation. We hope to see you there.

Projects that are planned well are safer. Methods like 4D modelling improve construction planning, bring teams together, and provide a visual output that can be used in RAMS and site inductions. By planning sequences in detail, modelling logistics and access, and constructing virtually in advance, hazards can be identified, managed or avoided. Through the session and panel, we'll delve into what 4D modelling means to us, outline the Health and Safety benefits, its contribution to DfMA, productivity improvement, improved planning, and describe in some detail how 4D can be used to get these benefits. Please click here to register.

Premieres: August 3rd, 9am-10am PT with live Q&A and on-demand following the event. [Click Here for iCal Invite] Join us live to learn and ask questions! Deep Dives are interactive technical live and on-demand events for developers, architects, or anyone building IoT solutions. Learn how to get started with iModel.js, an open-source programming library from Bentley Systems to create living digital twins: https://www.imodeljs.org/ Microsoft engineers and guest speakers do technical deep dives about a new feature or scenario. List of all upcoming Microsoft IoT Deep Dives: https://aka.ms/iotshow/deepdive Learn more about Integrating 3D Models and IoT data In this session we will demonstrate an application that combines 3D models, 2D maps, and reality mesh into a single environment for visualization. Within that environment we will demonstrate a live, real time, seamless visualization of IoT data streams. Next we will walk through the architecture that enables the application. We will show how we have mapped the IoT data to the assets within the digital twin. And we will show how to keep the digital twin in step with engineering changes. This is done by automating the generation of the Digital Twin Description Language (DTDL) .JSON. Bentley's iTwin platform and iModel.js open-source programming library provide powerful capabilities for aggregating 3D, 2D, reality data and other sources to link with IoT data for a "single pane of glass" visualization, analytics, and simulation so users can make more effective decisions in a timely manner. By integrating the iTwin platform with Azure Digital Twins and other Azure IoT services, Bentley and Microsoft are making it easier for developers, integrators, and customers to build digital twins of their infrastructure assets. Guest Speakers: Josh Schifter – Sr. Software Development Manager, Bentley Systems Roop Saini – Software Developer, Bentley Systems Deep Dive Host: Pamela Cortez - Azure IoT Senior PM Resources: Get started with iModel.js: https://www.imodeljs.org/ Learn more about iTwin: https://www.bentley.com/en/products/product-line/digital-twins/itwin Details on how to ask questions during the live event Add the Deep Dive invite to your calendar or come back to this page when the premiere airs and go to https://aka.ms/deepdive/digital-twins-live (link will be redirected to YouTube before the event) for the streaming event to view the video and chat box Make sure to sign in to YouTube to be able to ask questions to our engineers and talk to others on the chat! Have an idea for an IoT Deep Dive? Tweet #IoTDeepDive @AltaOhms with your request!