By Jason Wheelhouse

Earlier this year, an exciting kick-off summit took place in Latvia to launch an innovative ‘digital x sustainability’ project, as 19 partners from 11 countries met to develop plans and visions for a potentially transformative reset in the way district-wide energy estates can be planned and designed.

Here, Sweco Digital Delivery Manager Dinos Ipiotis reflects on the aims and opportunities of ExPEDite as it looks to make ‘digital’ the default setting in society-scale net zero strategy.

Dinos explains: “Our ultimate collective challenge in the ExPEDite partnership is to enable the planned creation and management of, as the name suggests, PEDs – Positive Energy Districts. These are, in short, urban or extra-urban areas capable of generating, using and distributing energy in various forms to a wider grid.

Specifically, we need to create and deploy a novel digital twin that allows for real-time monitoring, visualisation, and management of district-level energy flows. The idea is that this, as part of a suite of replicable modelling tools, will enable stakeholders to analyse planning actions towards scalable creation of PEDs cost-effectively, by enabling evidence-based decision making.

Dinos expands upon the workflow of the research job of work itself: “The initial development phase includes defining a set of requirements, establishing the architecture of the digital twin, and developing individual software components and tools.

The secondary integration and testing phase will combine the individual software components according to the defined architecture and includes continuous testing and demonstration in a Living Lab environment.

And the closing validation and evaluation phase of the project will involve the final physical demonstration and evaluation of the developed solution.”

Conceptually, the digital twin will allow for a holistic view of district-level energy flows and enables stakeholders to make informed decisions based on real-time data and highly engaging simulations. This approach will bring together city planners, local authorities and citizens in a dynamic ecosystem of active collaboration that is currently difficult to facilitate where data-fed visualisations are not available.

“One of the most exciting aspects of this project for me is the potential for enabling communities to create a positive impact on their energy efficiency and overall sustainability. To create a successful outcome, ExPEDite needs to develop solutions that are both ethically sustainable and socially acceptable. This enables the use of digitalisation as the keystone to a sustainable built environment, bringing together the three key pillars of sustainability: People, Planet and Prosperity.”

Dinos continues: “To succeed, engagement with key pivotal stakeholders is essential – no amount of technical prowess can replace stakeholder involvement. An exciting prospect is the incorporation of gamification elements in the development of a desktop interactive experience and a mobile app for ExPEDite, to create a step-change in public engagement and above all awareness of their role in management of the ongoing energy efficiency of their communities.

“The development of the digital twin visualisation, synced with gameplay features, is a thrilling prospect – it will give me the opportunity to fuse engineering and gaming which have been two of my biggest passions since childhood in one form or another. Injecting data from different sources into a gamified digital world will make it easier and more enjoyable for all relevant parties to not only interact with, but also feed back on and enhance our research.

“I’m especially looking forward to co-designing the technical solution, and developing the necessary software components and tools ‘under the bonnet’. The opportunity to work on cutting-edge technology and contribute to the development of sustainable energy solutions is always extremely motivating when you envisage the difference it has on the power to make on a societal scale.

“R&D initiatives like ExPEDite are important because they enable innovation and contribute to the development of sustainable communities. They bring together different stakeholders, including researchers, industry experts and policymakers to collaborate and address complex challenges, but challenges which are focused on a tangible human-oriented outcome. The best part of it all is that these initiatives help to advance knowledge, technology and practices in various fields.

“I believe digitalisation is the keystone to a sustainable built environment. Without digitalising how buildings produce information, how stakeholders consume and use the data from their built assets and without the emerging digital tools which can sit beside our bright minds and provide deeper and more accurate insights into the behaviour of existing assets and the potential behaviour of optimised assets, we cannot seriously hope to create a manageably sustainable built environment.

“Projects such as ExPEDite will enable us to shift away from the narrow focus of ‘Net Zero Buildings’ to a more holistic ‘Net Zero Human’ approach and help end the practice of siloed net zero thinking which can too often result in unintentional pushing of carbon from ‘my domain’ to someone else’s, often increasing the overall carbon footprint in the process. The information created by a PED and made accessible through a digital twin interface will enable more holistic insight into the behaviour of the built assets and the humans living and working within them.”

Sweco is constantly working to develop client-focused digital solutions – honing existing services and incubating new methodologies through 360-degree futurology to unlock potential and present a fundamental shift in the way we collectively design, manage and maintain our built environment.

For more information, contact Dinos.Ipiotis@sweco.co.uk.

Sweco’s fellow project partners are: Rīgas Tehniskā universitāte (LV), National Technical University of Athens (GR), Interuniversity research centre of public economics – University of Padova (IT), Digital + Sustainable Innovation Lab – Universidade Catolica Portuguesa (PT), VSB – Technical University of Ostrava (CZ), Laurea University of Applied Sciences (FI), EXUS AI Labs (GR), Eviden (SP), Plegma Labs (EL), Tecnalia (SP), Sweco UK Limited (UK), UpcoMinds Cyprus (CY), Deloitte Consulting S.r.l. S.B. (IT), Technological Platform Energy Security Czech Republic (CZ), Riga Digital Agency (LV), Rīgas valstspilsētas pašvaldības aģentūra “Rīgas enerģētikas aģentūra” (LV), The Lisbon Council asbl (PT), Open & Agile Smart Cities (BE), DATI Group (LV).

The project is funded by the European Commission. Sweco is applying for funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through the Horizon Guarantee Scheme.