Jethro Akroyd delivers keynote at Nexus Forum 2026

Assistant Research Professor Dr Jethro Akroyd delivered a keynote at Nexus Forum 2026, held at Rhodes House, University of Oxford, from 22 to 24 July. His talk, “Beyond Connected Digital Twins: The World Avatar for Carbon-Neutral and Resilient Energy Systems,” explained how knowledge models can be used to connect data, computational and physical agents to support low-carbon and resilient energy systems.

Jethro presented The World Avatar, an open digital system that links information, models and software from different fields. It gives shared meaning to data so that people and computers can find, combine and use it more easily. The aim is to help people understand how choices about energy, buildings, infrastructure, climate and society affect one another.

He showed how The World Avatar has been used in Pirmasens, Germany, to connect heat demand, weather, energy prices and district-heating equipment. Computer agents used this information to forecast demand and find more efficient ways to produce heat. The analysis found the potential to reduce operating costs by about 25 per cent and carbon dioxide emissions by about 50 per cent.

Jethro also described work in Singapore on energy planning, air quality and environmental exposure. Turning to the planning of resilient infrastructure systems, Jethro highlighted CMCL's work on CReDo, the Climate Resilience Demonstrator. The project brought together data from Anglian Water, BT and UK Power Networks with flood scenarios to create a connected digital twin of water, telecommunications and electricity infrastructure. Using technology developed through The World Avatar, CReDo explored how flooding could cause failures to spread between networks and affect the services on which people depend.

He concluded that better connections between data, models and expertise can help decision-makers see the wider effects of their choices and plan a fairer, more resilient energy transition.