18 Nov 2022

Warrington creates ‘digital twin town’

The Cheshire town of Warrington has announced it has created a ‘digital twin town’ which it claims will help identify energy, carbon and cost-efficiency measures across the town’s buildings and energy systems as it aims to deliver “a net-zero future”.

Having declared “a climate emergency” in 2019, Warrington Borough Council announced plans to work alongside charity Pure Leapfrog and Rewire-backed climate technology firm IES to work on a variety of initiatives to “shape and guide its journey towards net-zero carbon emissions” - the state in which the greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere are balanced by removal out of the atmosphere.

A key element of this strategy included the creation of a digital twin model made up of 29 separate areas and was created using data from various sources including the council itself, the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) database, and local distribution network operators. A digital twin is a virtual model designed to accurately reflect an area, with the Warrington model replicating an area of 70 square miles in the northwest of England including the Halliwell Jones Stadium, home to Warrington Wolves Rugby League Club.

The 29 models spanning the town were then collated into one single digital twin hosted on IES Intelligent Community Information Model (iCIM) platform, which connects each of its digital twin simulation tools. The various data streams fed into the development of the digital twin and included details such as geolocated building geometry, building use and age, building characteristics and electric network infrastructures.