{"id":134622,"date":"2023-11-13T10:58:48","date_gmt":"2023-11-13T10:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbctoday.co.uk\/news\/?p=134622"},"modified":"2023-11-13T10:58:48","modified_gmt":"2023-11-13T10:58:48","slug":"turing-research-innovation-cluster-digital-twins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbctoday.co.uk\/news\/digital-construction-news\/turing-research-innovation-cluster-digital-twins\/134622\/","title":{"rendered":"The new Turing Research & Innovation Cluster in Digital Twins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor David Wagg explains the role of the Alan Turing Institute\u2019s new Turing Research & Innovation Cluster in Digital Twins<\/h2>\n

The Alan Turing Institute is the United Kingdom\u2019s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. As part of the newly launched Institute Strategy, a Turing Research & Innovation Cluster in Digital Twins (TRIC-DT)<\/a> has been formed.<\/p>\n

The TRIC-DT mission is to carry out fundamental research relating to digital twins<\/a> that addresses the most urgent challenges facing society and achieves real-world impact.<\/p>\n

Background to digital twins<\/h3>\n

It has long been predicted that creating \u201cvirtual duplicates\u201d of the world around us will be possible in the future. Such virtual duplicates are what we now call digital twins, and early versions are now being built based on significant recent advances in digital technologies, data science and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Digital twins offer exciting new possibilities across a wide range of sectors from health, the environment and transport to manufacturing, defence and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

By connecting the virtual and physical worlds, digital twins can better support decisions, extend the operational life of systems and services, explore different scenarios, and introduce many other efficiencies and benefits.<\/p>\n

It is likely that digital twins will play a crucial role in delivering solutions to the global-scale challenges, such as climate change, which currently face humanity.<\/p>\n

While early twins have proven to be extremely powerful in a range of areas, they often have limitations, such as requiring specialised expertise and computational infrastructure, which can create a barrier that limits their scalable use. The urgency of the global-scale challenges means that research and development is needed in key thematic areas.<\/p>\n

Context of the Alan Turing Institute\u2019s research on digital twins<\/h3>\n

Since its inception in 2015, The Alan Turing institute has invested more than \u00a326m in digital twin research and innovation across a wide portfolio of projects, including developing foundational theory and applications in the engineering, environmental and social sciences.<\/p>\n

The TRIC-DT is a new mechanism that will work with existing research teams, in Turing to deliver three interlinked objectives:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Advance the science and implementation of digital twinning and use these advances to address important technological and societal challenges.<\/li>\n
  2. Produce open and reproducible computational tools for digital twin design, development, and deployment.<\/li>\n
  3. Build a multidisciplinary community of practice in digital twinning that democratises access to digital twin technology.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The TRIC-DT was launched at the AIUK event in March 2023 and has now moved into an operational phase to deliver its objectives.<\/p>\n

    Thematic research topics<\/h3>\n

    The TRIC-DT has three complementary research themes:<\/p>\n