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The partnership will look specifically at the impact of flooding caused by climate change on energy, water and telecoms networks
JCEEI to play integral role in pioneering resilient infrastructure partnership
Experts from the Joint Centre for Excellence in Environmental Intelligence (JCEEI) will play an integral role in a pioneering new partnership, designed to boost the UK’s infrastructure resilience to extreme climate and weather events.
The National Digital Twin programme (NDTp) has today (October 1st 2021) announced the launch of the Climate Resilience Demonstrator (CReDo) - a first of its kind collaboration to revolutionise the UK resilience and adaption to climate change events.
The collaboration - between owners of infrastructure assets, researchers and innovators - will apply state of the art capabilities in systems engineering, digital asset management and modelling to the climate crisis to plan a more resilient-built environment against extreme weather scenarios.
The JCEEI, a world-leading collaboration between the UK Met Office and the University of Exeter that utilises Artificial Intelligence (AI) to address the escalating threat of climate change, will play a crucial role in the collaboration.
The JCEEI’s Climate Impacts Mitigation, Adaption and Resilience (CLIMAR) framework, which uses Data Science and AI to quantify and visualise the risks of climate change on populations, infrastructure and the economy, will help develop a Climate Resilience Demonstrator, integrating climate projections with asset information and operational models to assess the future risks of flooding on critical infrastructure including energy, communications and water and sewage networks.
Professor Gavin Shaddick, project lead at the University of Exeter said: “We are very excited to be working with our partners in CReDo to build a Digital Twin that will provide a step-change in our understanding of the potential effects of climate change on critical infrastructure. Inter-disciplinary partnerships, spanning academia and industry, such as this one will be crucial in unlocking the enormous potential for Digital Twins to enhance our resilience to climate change across a wide variety of sectors.”
The CReDo partnership will develop, for the first time in the UK, a digital twin across energy, water and telecoms networks to provide a practical example of how connected data can improve climate adaptation and resilience.
It will look specifically at the impact of flooding caused by climate change on energy, water and telecoms networks. It demonstrates how those who own and operate them can use secure information sharing, across sector boundaries, to mitigate the effect of flooding on network performance and ensure reliable service delivery to customers.
Collaborating on CReDo are Anglian Water, BT and UK Power Networks, who will use their asset and operations data combined with data supplied by the Met Office to inform an increased level of infrastructure resilience.
The project will be delivered through a collaboration of research centres and industry partners; The Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Exeter, Newcastle and Warwick will work alongside the Hartree Centre, DAFNI, Science and Technology Facilities Council, CMCL Innovations, the Joint Centre of Excellence in Environmental Intelligence and Mott MacDonald. It is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Connected Places Catapult and the University of Cambridge.
CReDo project lead and author of the landmark report “Data for the Public Good”, Sarah Hayes, says: “We are really excited for what we can deliver through CReDo: demonstration that connected digital twins can enable increased climate resilience and that collaboration across a team that spans industry, academia and government forms the pieces of the puzzle that unlock solutions to reaching net zero.”
To find out more visit the CReDo web page. To find out more about the JCEEI, visit www.jceei.org
Date: 1 October 2021