UK NDTP

The programme's aim is to grow national capability in digital twinning and a working market for twins.¹ Those twins should be safe, secure, trustworthy and ethical, able to exchange information with each other, and maintainable over time by organisations of any size.¹ It is a government research and development programme,¹ with nothing to install or buy.

The demonstrators on the Isle of Wight run in phases.¹ The energy-system demonstrator models the island's electricity network from the 132 kV interconnectors down to 400 V transformers.² A flexible marketplace for controllable heating, storage and e-mobility is added on top, to test how the island could become self-sufficient in renewable electricity and reach net zero by 2040.² The stakeholders are Isle of Wight Council, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks and the Isle of Wight Energy Hub.²

The housing-retrofit demonstrator started in December 2022.³ It helps retrofit companies and third-sector organisations find homeowners eligible for funding such as ECO4, and put vulnerable households first.³ Its outputs are draft playbooks on user and data requirements, a carbon calculator for the data handling itself, and a visualisation tool.³ Pilots were planned from October 2023.³

The asset-resilience demonstrator began in July 2022.⁴ The council, police, fire and rescue, the NHS trust and the ambulance service work with it on land slippage, flooding and other incidents.⁴ It has produced a tool for assessing infrastructure vulnerability and a visualisation tool for event planning and response.⁴

The collection and case studies were published on 30 October 2023.^1,2,3,4 Guidance on what a digital twin is and how organisations can contribute followed in January 2024.¹