News

CReDo moves to Connected Places Catapult

Aerial view of vast flooded fields and farmland with a roadway cutting through, partially submerged under water, extending towards a distant town.

With the announcement that the Digital Twin Hub will transition to an Industry/Catapult partnership housed at the Connected Places Catapult, we are pleased to add that the second phase of CReDo, a demonstrator project showing how connected digital twins are key to tackling climate change, will also move from the National Digital Twin programme at the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) to Connected Places Catapult.

The first phase of the National Digital Twin programme’s Climate Resilience Demonstrator (CReDo), showing the benefits of connected digital twins across infrastructure networks on adaptation and resilience, came to a close at the end of March. This phase of the project wrapped up with a public webinar on 2nd March 2022, attended by over 240 participants, featuring presentations and interviews with the technical development team, funders and asset owners.

This first phase of CReDo has demonstrated how collaboration through connected digital twins is key to tackling climate change. The project is marking the move into its next phase, managed by Connected Places Catapult, with a series of outputs that will share key findings, benefits, lessons learned and the technical approach to this first-of-its-kind collaboration.

Discussing the urgency for collaboration through connected digital twins, Sarah Hayes, Head of the CReDo project, said:“The risks arising from failing to adapt to climate change are huge. CReDo seeks to mitigate these risks by increasing our understanding of infrastructure interdependencies and the future impact of interventions to increase resilience. The CReDo team have worked incredibly hard to lay the foundations for increasing infrastructure system resilience. It is the skills of our people, supported by new technologies, which will take forward our capability to tackle climate change through connected digital twins.”

Pointing to the potential for this work to have a positive impact, Mark Enzer, Head of the National Digital Twin programme, said: “In a wonderfully tangible and relevant way, CReDo has shown the value of enabling secure information flow across sector boundaries. But this should be just the beginning. The idea of connecting digital twins must be extended to other sectors and other use cases – not only in addressing climate change, but wherever we need to understand systems better and intervene more effectively. I believe in CReDo!”

Yalena Coleman, Director of Applied Data & Technology at Connected Places Catapult, said, “Integrated infrastructure is a key strategic focus area for Connected Places Catapult, and we will be investing in further phases of CReDo, working together with partners to take forward the key learnings from this phase. We will ensure the learnings are shared with the wider community and across other relevant initiatives like the Digital Connectivity Infrastructure Accelerator, National Underground Asset Register and others; and link up industry, academia and government thinking in this area.”

How to learn more about CReDO

Those wishing to learn from this phase of the project can do so by visiting the Digital Twin Hub, which will host all of the reports, webinars and other outputs so that they can continue to contribute to public good.