Unlocking digital twins project
Project highlights
We've worked on establishing industry-wide data standards and tools for digital twins.
Ofwat project funding
£334,800
Collaboration
We worked with two partners
Project status
Completed September 2024
Challenge: Avoiding duplicated effort
Digital twins use real-time data from sensors. They show a digital representation of the current state of a real-world system. This enables data-driven decisions to be made and problems to be identified proactively. It will also help improve resilience to problems such as water scarcity.
Many water companies are experimenting with digital twins. However, a lock of common data standards can bring challenges. It also requires extra investment in redeveloping algorithms for each company.
Solution: An industry-wide standard
We've worked on establishing industry-wide data standards and tools. This is for developing and implementing digital twins in the UK water sector. The aim is to enable consistent and efficient asset and process monitoring.
How the project works
Key objectives for the project included:
- Demonstrate the value of shared standards for digital twins in the UK water industry
- Develop open-source customisable scripts to create a standard digital twin
- Pioneer research and development of graph digital twins within this space
- Put in place a set of recipes for translating water company data into a shared network
The project has successfully achieved its aims and developed the customisable scripts. It demonstrates the value of data standards and generalisable code. This enables the foundation for further rapid, and consistent innovation. The script will be released to be accessed externally for free during 2025.
Timeline and collaboration
The £334,800 project funded by Ofwat started in October 2023. We worked with Sand Technologies and Severn Trent Water. The project was completed in September 2024.
Project resources
This video provides an overview of the system in use. Please note that the example data shown in the demonstration is not included as part of the downloaded sample code.
Technical project resources
Please note that a level of technical knowledge is required to download, install and test the system. Code and installation instructions are provided for teams looking to work with and enhance the code.
All source code (including a synthetic test data creation tool) is available from GitHub.
This document provides an overview of the technical architecture, code structure and data requirements:
This document provides an end-to-end guide with detailed instructions to download and test the functionality: