UK NDTP

The National Digital Twin Programme (NDTP) is a UK government research and development programme, published under the Department for Business and Trade, whose stated purpose is to grow national capability in digital twinning and to develop the standards, processes and tools for a working market in digital twins: twins that are safe, secure, trustworthy and ethical, that can exchange information with each other, and that can be maintained over time by organisations of any size.

The programme tests its approach through a demonstrator programme on the Isle of Wight, run in phases. The energy-system demonstrator models the island's electricity network from the 132 kV interconnectors down to 400 V transformers, with a flexible marketplace for controllable heating, storage and e-mobility, to test how the island could become self-sufficient in renewable electricity by 2040; its stakeholders are Isle of Wight Council, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks and the Isle of Wight Energy Hub. The housing-retrofit demonstrator, started in December 2022, helps retrofit companies and third-sector organisations find homeowners eligible for funding such as ECO4, and prioritise vulnerable households; its outputs are draft playbooks on user and data requirements, a carbon calculator for the data handling itself, and a visualisation tool, with pilots planned from October 2023. The asset-resilience demonstrator, commenced July 2022, works with the council, police, fire and rescue, the NHS trust and the ambulance service on land slippage, flooding and other incidents, producing a tool for assessing infrastructure vulnerability and a visualisation tool for event planning and response.

It is a government programme rather than a product; there is nothing to install or buy. Guidance on what a digital twin is and how organisations can contribute was published in January 2024.

Status: the collection and case studies were published on 30 October 2023 and last updated in November 2023; the pages read give no later progress.