The Berkshire station is one of the busiest rail hubs in Britain, used by nearly 20 million passengers a year, of whom nearly four million change trains there.
Sensors are set to be installed across the site to capture live, real-time data on energy use, which will be fed into a ‘digital twin’ of the station that has been developed on a specialist computer-modelling platform. Using historical data and modelling, a number of opportunities have been identified that are predicted could result in around a 20 per cent improvement on the station’s carbon emissions and energy performance.
Network Rail has teamed up with engineering and design consultancy Atkins, and Cardiff University to develop a ‘digital twin’ of Reading station, utilising Cardiff University’s Computational Urban Sustainability Platform (CUSP).
Using the sensor data and computer modelling to create baselines, CUSP has been employed to map out ways of improving the station’s performance through...