• News item 162

The Universal Digital Twin is growing

11 August 2021
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Preprint 279, ''Universal Digital Twin - Integration of national-scale energy systems and climate data'', has been published!

Abstract

This paper applies a knowledge graph-based approach to unify multiple heterogeneous domains inherent in climate and energy supply research. Existing approaches that rely on bespoke models with spreadsheet-type inputs are non-interpretable, static and make it difficult to combine existing domain specific models. The difficulties inherent to this approach become increasingly prevalent as energy supply models gain complexity while society pursues a net-zero future. In this work we develop new ontologies to extend the World Avatar knowledge graph to represent gas grids, gas consumption statistics, and climate data. Using a combination of the new and existing ontologies we construct a Universal Digital Twin that integrates data describing the systems of interest and specifies respective links between domains. We represent the UK gas transmission system, and HadUK-Grid climate data set as linked data for the first time, formally associating the data with the statistical output areas used to report governmental administrative data throughout the UK. We demonstrate how computational agents contained within the World Avatar can operate on the knowledge graph, incorporating live feeds of data such as instantaneous gas flow rates, as well as parsing information into interpretable forms such as interactive visualisations. Through this approach, we enable a dynamic, interpretable, modular and cross-domain representation of the UK that enables domain specific experts to contribute towards a national-scale digital twin.