Data-driven digital twins drawing more attention in quest to bolster asset resilience, performance

As an integrated, digital representation of physical assets, a digital twin uses historical and current data – in near time – to help predict and optimise system performance.

It’s in constant dialogue with its physical counterpart – making it distinct from traditional models – and can be built on design criteria, calibrated using historical data, and updated in real-time with sensor data.

European utilities are seeing and beginning to embrace the value of digital twins, reflected in global critical human infrastructure leader Black & Veatch’s creation of one of the first water utility digital twins – for Anglian Water in England – in 2019.

The benefits come from a digital twin’s constant comparisons of the modelling predictions with actual operations, combining multiple internal and external data sources across the asset base with predictive analytical techniques served through multiple functional views. The result: improved insights that support better decisions, leading to better outcomes in the physical world.

For example, a digital twin can support water quality and supply teams by integrating weather and raw water quality data with asset availability from SCADA across the network, creating a predictive view of operating scenarios and performance deterioration, along with root-cause identification that allows users to intervene before a reactive event occurs. A digital twin also can help with maintenance activities, supporting better pre-planning of the work and overlaying maintenance work orders within the spatial models, leading to accurate identification of the asset’s location.

Outside of the operational phases of the asset lifecycle, a digital twin will be able to dynamically inform risk-based investment decisions.

Making data work

Putting the data that utilities gather to work requires a strategy that spans from data collection to data-driven decision-making. Responses to the 2021 Black & Veatch Strategic Directions: Water Report suggests that such strategies are not yet widely implemented in the U.S., although they are developing.

Source: Black & Veatch

Because digital twins are of greatest value to utilities with a mature, integrated data programme, their current application is likely to be limited. A digital twin will only be as good as the data upon which it is based; without solid historical data to build the model and real-time performance data to continuously update it, a digital twin risks becoming a stranded asset.

A crawl-walk-run approach can yield compounding value to a maturing organisation, building upon foundational steps such as defining the data that best supports the utilities’ goals, thereby ensuring that this data is being captured and available in an accessible format. Analytics and visualisation tools are becoming much more readily available and easier to use, offering a good way of unlocking value and being an effective way of putting existing data to work. All of these steps are valuable in their own right, along the way laying the foundation for an effective digital twin programme.

Have you read?
Water industry challenges amplify the need for resilience and a digital approach

An age-old challenge

During the nine years in which Black & Veatch has been publishing its survey-driven Strategic Directions: Water Report, respondents across the U.S. water utility sector have cited aging infrastructure as the industry’s biggest challenge. Data collection and management – and IT – are well down the rankings of the chief concerns, suggesting that utilities do not believe that the ways in which they use data and digital tools need significant change.

Source: Black & Veatch

This could suggest that U.S. water utilities do not perceive the performance optimisation and increased operations and maintenance (O&M) efficiencies that digital twins promise will make a meaningful difference in the operation and asset management of aging infrastructure. In other words, the data-driven, decision-making that digital twins offer has a less clear return on investment (ROI) than utilities’ current digital strategies. The value of a digital twin is insufficiently proven; the benefits – over and above those delivered by utilities’ current digital strategies – do not currently justify investing in a digital twin.

This may change as the value of utilities’ existing data and analytics programmes become clearer, and as the potential of tools that support a broader range of the utility’s activities – and help integrate multiple points of the asset and operational lifecycle – become manifest.

In addition, it is worth noting that software vendors are beginning to enable commercial solutions more focused on aspects of digital twins, ultimately leading to broader adoption of specific capabilities.

Repository of institutional knowledge

A digital twin relies on data. But without the insights of the people who are intimate with how assets have been designed, built and behave – and with knowledge of what the assets need to do and not do – the data is far less useful, and the digital twin will deliver less value. For this reason, expertise from a wide variety of disciplines across the utility provides insights during a digital twin’s development.

This makes the digital twin a readily accessible repository of the institutional knowledge of people who know the water and wastewater assets that the digital twin emulates. The ROI this represents is difficult to quantify, but at a time when knowledge management is a concern for water utilities – and an aging workforce means a great deal of real-world expertise is being lost to retirements – the benefits could be significant.

Along the way, a digital twin also can serve as an invaluable resource for training new generations of water engineers, and the virtual nature of the digital twin makes it also a much lower risk option than training new teams on live assets.

About the authors

Jeff Buxton is managing director in the Black & Veatch Management Consulting Group.

Doug Preece is a managing director in the Black & Veatch Management Consulting Group.

Brian Melton is a chief technologist at Black & Veatch, where he helps embrace digital transformation and recognize its impact on project delivery for the company’s water business.