The Alan Turing Institute has secured £3 million from UKRI to establish and host a network that will help transform the UK’s national capability in digital twinning.
The funding will help establish a UK-wide inter-disciplinary research network with stakeholders from academia, government and industry. It builds on the Turing’s established expertise in digital twins, such as the recently announced Turing Research and Innovation Cluster in Digital Twins (TRIC-DT).
This network community has been identified as urgently needed to fill gaps in the underpinning research relating to digital twins.
The award will run for five years and will help develop game-changing breakthroughs that will lead to a new generation of intelligent, resilient, and trusted digital twins.
Through a series of activities, the network aims to:
- facilitate the exchange of knowledge and encourage new cross-disciplinary collaborations and innovations for digital twins
- accelerate the development of the underpinning academic research that is needed to develop robust, resilient and trusted digital twins that can operate at speed and scale
- help set the UK digital twin agenda via thought leadership activities
- facilitate explorative cross-disciplinary pilot research projects and feasibility studies that stimulate further funding applications and opportunities relating to digital twins
- support outreach, skills development and sustainability for digital twin technology
Co-investigators for the award are based at Exeter University, the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC), Ulster University and the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction. Alongside these organisations other members of the leadership team are based at University of Edinburgh, Rothamsted Research, University of Strathclyde, University of Warwick and Newcastle University.
A digital twin can be described as a computational model designed to replicate a physical object or process. This can range from a virtual copy of a single structure, such as a bridge, to more complicated infrastructure, such as an entire city. They can help offer insights into how an object or process is working, allowing the opportunity to drastically improve its functionality.
Professor David Wagg, Project Principal investigator and co-director of the Turing Research and Innovation Cluster for Digital Twins (TRIC-DT) at The Alan Turing Institute, said: “Digital twins offer exciting new possibilities across a wide range of sectors from health, environment, transport, manufacturing, defence, and infrastructure. They are a key technology to help address many of the societal challenges we face.
“Our ambition with this award is to build a broad community of stakeholders to expand digital twin research to address key challenges such as trust, interoperability and the societal aspects of digital twinning. We hope that the NetworkPlus will help to address clear gaps in the current research landscape and will allow us to transform the UK’s capability in digital twinning.”
Advancing digital twin research is an important part of the Turing’s new strategy, which aims to use important technologies, like digital twins, to help solve its grand challenges in key societal areas. The TRIC in particular aims to democratise access to digital twin technology by making computational and social tools reproducible and freely accessible to research and innovation communities.
Professor Adrian Smith, Institute Director at The Alan Turing Institute, said: “Digital twins are an area of strategic priority for the Turing and this award demonstrates our continued leadership in this area. It aligns with the focus in our strategy to translate research excellence into societal impact across a range of challenges. With the right collaboration opportunities, researchers have the ability to address some of the biggest challenges facing society today.”
Dr Kathryn Magnay, Deputy Director for Cross Council Programmes, EPSRC said:
“As the National Institute for AI and Data Science the Turing are perfectly placed to establish and host this network for UKRI. They will bring together stakeholders from across communities to address the multidisciplinary research challenges in digital twinning that need to be solved for these technologies to contribute to economic and societal resilience; reducing our vulnerabilities and helping us respond to and recover from shocks.”
