There’s never been a better time for asset owners to adopt digital twins to unlock significant value and provide benefits for themselves, their customers and safeguard their staff.
Consequently, digital twins are fast becoming a realization for many organisations to simulate, predict, and inform complex decisions across the whole life of their assets or an entire portfolio. From hospitals, airports to railways and utilities, Digital AECOM is connecting physical assets to dynamic digital models enabling improved insights that support better decisions, leading to better outcomes in the physical world.
Simply put, digital twins turn data into safer, more resilient outcomes by simulating and testing different scenarios in a virtual environment from investment planning, design, construction and into operation.
A digital twin by name needs two versions – the physical and the digital. The development of new assets, or their refurbishment, provides an excellent opportunity to develop a digital version in the first instance and then build a 'smart' physical asset where performance can be monitored using the digital twin.
In all these instances, the digital twin has many potential use cases and levels of sophistication, from a single asset to a federated system of systems facilitating cross-asset benchmarking. We believe that a digital twin is unique and should be configured to be proportionate and appropriate to the individual value architecture our clients require.
Our digital twin solutions range from simple information models enriched with real-time data monitoring and visualization to more sophisticated probabilistic simulations and autonomous adaptive interventions.
It is important to note that these digital twin processes are no longer confined to megaprojects or large estates. Our digital twin framework allows the benefits of a digital twin approach to be realised across a range of schemes and built assets, especially projects and portfolios with complex programmes, collaborative requirements or challenging specific activities.
Our digital twin solutions can facilitate real-time pulse checks on asset health. They also support better operational responsiveness with optimized maintenance strategies and maximized asset availability with improved asset resilience through smarter, faster responses to accidents and disruption.
We enable connected built asset systems coupled with better data insight which enhances resilience in asset management and service provision through smarter, faster responses to accidents and disruption. This is empowered by monitoring and analysing in real-time actual performance facilitating a condition-based, proactive repair before fail model. Using predictive simulation modelling, we find patterns in operational data and facilitate a repair before the fail process reducing operational disruption costs.
Additionally, using integration architecture, dynamic data capture, unification, and analysis from various data points such as transport, logistics, social infrastructure, waste management, utilities and energy management, we can create a linked digital twin to provide holistic insight and scenario planning for carbon reduction.