Connected Places Catapult convened experts who specialise in data, digital infrastructure, and public transport to draw upon research and insights into connected digital twins and evaluate how they might support the decarbonisation and improved connectivity of the UK transport system.
Connected digital twins are well placed to deliver significant economic impact and drive the UK as a science and technology superpower.
These scenarios provide the market with a common understanding of the value federated networks of transport digital twins will provide to the public transport system, if we take action to build it.
These four futures are built across two conditions:
Connected Intelligence:
The measure of how connected digital twins are able to bridge silos, build intelligent understanding, and drive efficiency.
Environmental and Social Impact:
The measure of how connected digital twins are able to mitigate the effects of climate change and build resilience, connectivity, and inclusivity.
Each scenario begins with an introduction to the nature of the existing digital twin landscape before exploring how action or inaction leads to impacts across resilience, safety, efficiency, and passenger agency.
The establishment of connected digital twins to improve the public transport system is less of an issue of technology, and more an issue of communication and management. Incentivising change by demonstrating the value of connected digital twins is required to enable a new paradigm to be adopted and embraced.
Any efficient system is dependent, and indeed defined , by its ability to withstand strain. Truly efficient networks are resilient and able to overcome incidents and hazards. Finding the balance between utilising assets and maintaining reserves is key to enabling a truly efficient network.
A resilient system involves three factors. Robustness or resistance to hazards, recovery or system bounce back, and evolution or progressive strengthening. Live awareness, rapid diagnosis, and predictive maintenance can all be enabled through connected digital twins to bake resilience into efficiency.
Intelligent understanding doesn’t necessarily effect change. By leveraging data skills, it is important to translate data into insight, and insight into action. Utilising understanding is key to improving safety, resilience, efficiency, sustainability, and connectivity.
The efficiency and environmental impact of public transport is significantly affected by the ways people travel. Sharing selected datasets through APIs and enabling MaaS technologies to provide passengers with the agency to make informed decisions on transport options is critical to reducing the carbon output of the network.
The true power of connected digital twins is not just the intelligent understanding they build but also the opportunities for innovation they provide. Maximising the added value is dependent on enabling new technologies, new processes, and new organisations to enable the improved connectivity and decarbonisation of the public transport system.
Outputs | Activities |
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Research and innovation strategy defined for connected digital twins in transport 2023 - 2026 |
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Key milestones defined for achieving an ecosystem of digital twins in transport 2023 - 2032 |
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Identified infrastructure and services supporting requirements of connecting digital twins 2024 - 2026 |
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Outputs | Activities |
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Accessible procurement frameworks for connected digital twins 2025 - 2028 |
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Appropriate routes for the investment and finance community to invest in connected digital twins and provide maintenance and management funding throughout the lifecycle of connected digital twins and their assets 2026 - 2028 |
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Commercial models in place to address funding needs for connected digital twins including maintenance 2024 - 2026 |
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Marketing strategy in place to communicate achievements in digital twins and attract stakeholders 2026 - 2028 |
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Outputs | Activities |
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Baseline for digitised assets to establish the direction for digital twins in the transport sector 2023 - 2025 |
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Use cases identified based on customer/industry/government needs and the value gained from combined data 2024 - 2026 |
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Business case for use cases that require government funding and for those that industry will invest in 2027 - 2028 |
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Operationalised connected digital twin use cases 2031 - 2035 |
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The TRIB-commissioned Vision and Roadmap, produced by the Connected Places Catapult, consists of workstreams, components, outputs, outcomes and activities, which collectively guide us towards a future in which we achieve the shared vision in 2035.
At the top level, the roadmap shows different workstreams together with their corresponding components. A click on each component opens up the expected output and target delivery date. A further click on ‘Explore this workstream’ presents the output and associated activities, the key contributors and supporting organisations, outcomes, and a selection of relevant publications.
These activities are the building blocks which can be used to achieve the 2035 Vision and have been selected based on those which are likely to have the most impact. The Roadmap has been developed in collaboration with experts from academia, industry and government (further detail on the partners and stakeholder pages), but the list of activities is not exhaustive and prioritisation has been conducted by assessing the greatest potential impact of the activities.
Workstream | Component | Target output end year | |||
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2023-2025 | 2026-2030 | 2031-2035 | |||
Strategy and innovationExplore this Workstream | |||||
Enabling environmentExplore this Workstream | |||||
People, skills and cultureExplore this Workstream | |||||
Technology and dataExplore this Workstream | |||||