The Climate Resilience Demonstrator (CReDo) team and project partners have launched a new film to show how a novel approach to cross-sector datasharing in a connected digital twin is key to safeguarding critical infrastructure as we tackle the effects of climate change.
CReDo is combining datasets from Anglian Water, BT and UK Power Networks into one system model to develop a cross-sector picture of impact of extreme weather events. It uses a distributed architecture to share data and insights across sectoral and organisational boundaries, demonstrating how we can safely collaborate on a national network of connected digital twins to create resilient infrastructure.
The UK’s critical national infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather and other effects of climate change, such as sea level rises. Major power outages, landslides onto roads, buckling train lines and flooding of infrastructure sites: these are all realistic scenarios, and can lead to cascading risks affecting other sectors. Different infrastructure sectors are highly interdependent, so the shutdown of one operator may cause knock-on effects for multiple sectors.
“Asset owners really need to know who they are dependent on – it’s crucial both for the integrity of assets but also for the service you give your customers. Understanding the risks in advance and how we can mitigate them is key.” Julia King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge
The new film features Julia King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge and Chair of the Adaptation Committee, along with David Riley, Head of Carbon Neutrality at Anglian Water, Paul O’Brien, Director of AI, Cybersecurity and Operations at BT and Barry Hatton, Director, Asset Management at UK Power Networks.
It shows how infrastructure owners can share information in a safe and secure way, allowing visibility of those aspects that help everyone to understand dependencies and make better decisions.
CReDo has been designed so that it can be extensible to other asset owners, new sectors, wider geographic regions and a range of extreme weather events. The wider benefit is that it improves overall resilience. Barry Hatton, UK Power Networks
The film, produced by Econ Films London, premiered at the CReDo showcase event on Tuesday 7 March 2023.
About CReDo
The CReDo project launched in November 2021 to create a proof-of-concept connected digital twin using shared data. The scenario was a severe storm causing surface water flooding across the energy, water and telecoms networks in a specific area. The CReDo digital twin looked at interdependencies across the infrastructure system and modelled when assets failed due to high water levels. It propagated knock-on failures through the combined system. The impact on primary and secondary assets and the cascade of resulting failures were captured in an interactive visualisation.
Phase two of the work is maturing the system into a working prototype that is scalable and extensible to new asset owners, larger geographical areas and new climate scenarios. It is using a distributed data architecture to maximise the data retained under an individual asset owner’s private systems and security. This opens the door for future collaboration with other digital and data initiatives, the co-development of standards and solutions and ultimately, connected intelligence through an interoperable digital ecosystem.
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