Designing for federation in digital twinning for transport

Building connected digital twins for transport

This workshop, hosted by Connected Places Catapult for the TransiT Digital Twinning for Transport Decarbonisation programme, will explore how digital twins can work together through federation to support better planning, decision-making and decarbonisation across transport systems. 

Federation enables organisations to connect digital twins, models and data while maintaining autonomy over their systems and information. It offers a way to address increasingly complex transport challenges that cut across modes, operators, geographical boundaries and infrastructure sectors.

As transport systems become more interconnected, there is a growing need to understand how digital twins can share information reliably, operate at scale and support collaboration between organisations. Federation presents opportunities to improve interoperability, resilience, assurance and trust while enabling transport, energy, logistics and other sectors to work more effectively together.

The workshop will bring together stakeholders from across industry, government and academia to explore practical experiences, identify barriers and opportunities, and develop recommendations for advancing digital twin federation within the UK transport ecosystem.

Workshop format and topics

The day will combine keynote and firestarter presentations with highly interactive discussions to encourage collaboration, knowledge exchange and the sharing of real-world experiences. It will recognise that different transport modes, including rail, road, aviation, maritime and logistics, may face distinct technical, operational and organisational challenges when developing federated digital twins.

Discussion will focus on five key themes:

• • Federation architectures and integration approaches – exploring different ways to connect digital twins, models and data sources while balancing autonomy, scalability and assurance
  • Interoperability, standards and governance – examining the role of interface contracts, shared semantics, ontologies, standards and governance frameworks in enabling effective federation
  • Trust, assurance and resilience – considering uncertainty, provenance, verification, security and trustworthiness in federated digital twin environments
  •  From data to decision-making – exploring challenges around access to data, data quality, model development, model integration and the use of federated digital twins to inform operational and strategic decision-making 
  • Applications for transport decarbonisation – exploring how federated digital twins can support whole-system decision-making across transport, energy and logistics to accelerate progress towards net zero
    

Why attend?   

This event is designed for those developing, using or enabling digital twins across transport and related sectors, including policymakers, infrastructure owners, transport operators, technology providers, researchers and standards bodies.

Participants will be able to:

• Share experiences of digital twin integration and interoperability challenges
• Help identify practical barriers and opportunities for federation
• Explore approaches for improving trust, assurance and governance
• Consider how different transport modes create different federation challenges and requirements
• Contribute to recommendations that will help shape future transport digital twin ecosystems
• Explore ways to become involved in future TransiT federation research and collaboration
• Build new connections across sectors working on digital transformation and transport decarbonization

Outputs will help inform ongoing TransiT research into digital twin federation and contribute to wider discussions around interoperability, standards and future transport architectures. Participants will also help identify priorities for future collaboration, develop practical recommendations and explore opportunities to contribute to future federation activities within the TransiT programme.

Agenda

09:30 Arrival and coffee 

10:00 Welcome from Connected Places Catapult and TransiT

10:15 Keynote:  Why federation matters for future transport systems 

10:40 Three fire-starter presentations: Federation in practice + Q&A 

12:00 Networking Lunch 

13:15 Afternoon workshop: Challenges and opportunities for digital twin federation 

14:00 Group feedback, recommendations and opportunities for involvement

14:30 Panel discussion: What does successful federation look like for UK transport?

15:15 Closing remarks and next steps

*Kindly note that this event will be recorded for sound, for internal use only in the production of the workshop summary, recommendations, and any further academic publications, which may be published after the event. We may also use quotes from the tables. Please let us know if you would prefer not to be quoted.

The TransiT team would love your insights to be part of their more formal research, and we may ask you about this at the event.

About TransiT 

TransiT a national research hub using digital twins and associated technologies to identify the fastest, least-risky and lowest cost pathways to transport decarbonisation in the UK.

It is a collaboration of eight universities and almost 70 industry partners, jointly led by Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow and funded by the UK Research and Innovation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the main funding body for engineering and physical sciences research in the UK, and supported by the UK government’s Department for Transport.