Digital twins—virtual replicas of physical systems—are being built for everything from hospital wards to motorways, but the academic research needed to make them work together reliably is years behind the industry rush to deploy them. Industry-led projects have produced bespoke, isolated digital twins that cannot easily share data, scale up, or account for uncertainty. DTNet+ will create the first dedicated academic-led network across the full remit of UKRI to fill these gaps. The consortium will bring together researchers working on interoperability, scaling, governance, and societal effects—topics that commercial developers have largely ignored. If successful, the network could lower the entry costs for building digital twins, allow them to communicate across sectors, and make their predictions trustworthy enough for real-world decisions. That matters for infrastructure managers deciding when to repair a bridge, for NHS planners modelling patient flow, and for manufacturers optimising supply chains. The abstract does not specify patient numbers, cost reductions, or efficiency gains; the impact is structural—turning a patchwork of proprietary tools into a coherent research foundation.
View original technical description
Digital twins are a fusion of digital technologies considered by many leading advocates to be revolutionary in nature. Digital twins offer exciting new possibilities across a wide range of sectors from health, environment, transport, manufacturing, defence, and infrastructure. By connecting the virtual and physical worlds (e.g. cyber-physcial), digital twins are able to better support decisions, extend operational lives, and introduce multiple other efficiencies and benefits. As a result, digital twins have been identified by government, professional bodies and industry, as a key technology to help address many of the societal challenges we face. To date, digital twin (DT) innovation has been strongly driven by industry practitioners and commercial innovators. As would be expected with any early-adoption approach, projects have been bespoke & often isolated, and so there is a need for research to increase access, lower entry costs and develop interconnectivity. Furthermore, there are several major gaps in underpinning academic research relating to DT. The academic push has been significantly lagging behind the industry pull. As a result, there is an urgent need for a network that will fill gaps in the underpinning research for topics such as; uncertainty, interoperability, scaling, governance & societal effects. In terms of existing networking activities, there are several industry-led user groups and domain-specific consortia. However, there has never been a dedicated academic-led DT network that brings together academic research teams across the entire remit of UKRI with user-led groups. DTNet+ will address this gap with a consortium which has both sufficient breadth and depth to deliver transformative change.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know